Page 83 of Leading Conviction
“Copy that,” Snake answered.
“Wait… do you know who took the General tonight, or not?” Draco asked in his rough voice, obviously over the entire interrogation.
“I do. If it was not you, then it was one other. But it is funny,nyet?”
“What’s funny?” Hawk asked, his brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate past his racing pulse.
“You are so smart, and yet you have not figured it out. I am surprised after all this time, you thought you were the only ones.”
Hawk’s already rapid pulse was off the charts, but that response made it stop altogether. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“That you were not the only ones. MF7, as you were, did notendwith the BlackStone boys.” An awful grin barely lifted his lips. “You were only the beginning.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
“Tommy! Come on,mi avecito!¡Vámanos!It’s time to wake up.”
Hannah’s son rolled over with a grunt making her snort as he returned to his starfish position, his default setting when it came to sleeping.
“Tomás, it’s time to wake up. I know it’s early, but I promised Callie and Nora I would cookhuevos motuleñossince they were both up all night.”
The men left well after midnight, wanting to use the cover of darkness for their mission. Since then, the women had taken only catnaps in order to stay alert, just in case the team needed them.
Nora had monitored security, Callie had been ready to connect with Marco or the FBI at any given moment, and Hannah had felt completely useless sketching beside them, waiting for updates until she’d nearly passed out from fatigue.
Callie seemed to be just fine with her fifteen-minute power naps, but Nora had eaten, drank, and slept in front of those computer monitors. She’d been living in that war room from the moment Hannah had first met with the team there, nearly forty-eight hours ago. If Hannah was exhausted after her fitful rest, Nora had to be dead on her feet.
Getting texts from the men once they’d landed had been both a relief and stressful, because that’s all they’d been. Texts. Wes and Nora had worked on a system so they could communicate while the team was out, but once they got farther into the North Georgia mountains, the signal got spotty until it was out altogether.
Hannah had finally succumbed to her body’s need for rest and had promised the women breakfast in the morning. Before Naomi and her daughter went back home to the team’s mountain cabin, she’d assured Hannah the facility had all the essentials. Turned out the fridge not only had the typical United States Southern breakfast foods, but also had all the ingredients for her favorite hearty egg, chorizo, and tortilla breakfast dish her mother had taught her when she was a girl.
The fact that these men—who hadn’t so much as lifted a spatula since she’d gotten there—had every ingredient down to ripe plantains confirmed what Hannah had suspected that first morning while making orange blossom sweet tea. Hawk had definitely done more than just the average shopping trip that night she’d arrived.
“Tom-my,” she sang off-key. “Come on,mijo, it won’t be hard. I even did the sauce and the chorizo last night, so we have very little to do this morning to make the dish. And it’ll feel good to do something for others, especially since they’ve been helping us.”
Her son groaned and kicked the sheets. “Soyougo fix them breakfast then. Wake me when it’s ready.”
“Oh no you don’t.Mientras vivas en esta casa, se hace lo que yo digo.My house, my rules.”
“But thisisn’tyour house,” Tommy whined as she pulled his hands away from his face and tugged him up to sit.
“Ooh, Tomás Hawkins, how I wish I could’ve seen you talk to yourabuelalike this. She would’ve had a fit. Come on. Up you go. You either help me make breakfast, or it’s boring oatmeal for you. You know the rules.”
Tommy groaned but finally began to move on his own. Albeit they were very dramatic,telenovela-worthy moves where he crawled toward the edge of the bed before rolling off entirely, but he was moving in the right direction, at least.
She tossed his clothes at him where he now lay on the floor. “Get dressed and shower. If you’re not outside and clean in twenty minutes, it’ll be a no-TV time, all-chores kind of day.”
Tommy’s eyes snapped open at the threat. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered before hopping to his feet and taking his clothes to the bathroom.
She smirked and ruffled his hair as he walked past. Once she heard the water running, she stopped by a mirror and fluffed her wavy, dark-blonde hair.
It’d been a while since she’d dressed herself in something nicer than a simple T-shirt. And when she’d realized the bag of outfits Ellie had given Hawk also had makeup inside, she could hardly wait to put it on, too. The tight jeans and blue blouse made her feel more normal than she’d felt in a long time. And the mascara, complimentary eyeshadow, and blue heels were just the cherry on top.
Hawk’s favorite color had always been blue. What would he think about her new outfit—
No. It’s breakfast time. When they’re back, I can fantasize.
She’d developed the daydreaming habit as a kid, waiting for her father to come home from being on tour with the Army. Even as a child, she’d been confused at her mixed emotions over his homecoming after several blissful months without him. As an adult, she could now name the anxious feeling. It was one she desperately wished she’d been able to tell her mother growing up.
