Page 49 of Resisting His Target
All of it came rushing back. Her in his bed, the two of them making love. Her standing naked while he made a fool out of himself like a cranky teenager and told her to leave.
He covered his face with his hand. “Oh, fuck.”
What the hell had he been thinking?
He remembered her touch on his face, her kisses, as if she could make it all better somehow. How it had made him feel like a fool. He’d called her patronizing and she’d denied it. He threw back the covers and sat with his head in his hands. “Double fuck.”
He’d managed to take the best night he’d had in years and twist it into a goddamn pity party. A fight she couldn’t win, one he’d never live down and she wouldn’t forget.
Shame on him for letting himself get caught up in her. Concern and protectiveness had grown into admiration and lust. Strong feelings for a strong woman, either of which had the power to knock him down as they had last night.
He moved to the window, his mind littered with images from the night before. Her competitive spirit wrestling with his. Her acquiescence pleasing him as much as her body. He already knew her well enough to know that wouldn’t have been the last match of its kind, if only he had handled things differently.
Yeah? And how should you have handled it?
He wasn’t a man who could be with a woman long-term. Not anymore. It was right that he should end it now, before the mission was over. A clean break. He didn’t want a relationship with anyone, and definitely not a woman as all-consuming as Jackie Desjardins.
He showered carefully, avoiding the worst of his burns. He told himself he was right. He’d be all business today, there to make sure she got backstage without a hitch and in one piece, too. A bodyguard for the last leg of the race, one she probably didn’t even need.
The sun was up by the time he’d shaved and dressed for the day. They still had several hours before they’d planned to go to the convention center, but damned if he would sit here like he was hiding from her. He opened the adjoining door to her room, only to find hers closed and locked, par for the course he’d carved out of this turf.
“Jackie?”
Nothing.
He went to the hotel phone and dialed her room. It rang off the hook, the first real stirring of concern settling into his gut. The longer he knocked, the more he wondered if she was in there at all. And what if she wasn’t? Would she have gone to the convention center without him?
No way.
He checked his phone for messages. “God fucking damn it!” he yelled upon reading hers, stomping his foot and throwing the device hard at the padded headboard.
There was no telling what she was walking into. What if she ran into McGrath or managed to confront him alone? With his entire career on the line, what was to stop him from strangling her with his bare hands? She was acting as if there was no danger, like she didn’t need Razorback with her, and that was just stupidity on her part.
She did it because you pushed her away, asshole. It’s your fault she went alone.
Razorback had told her to go away and that’s just what she did. If something happened to her, it would be entirely his fault, and he cursed himself.
He packed up his gear, carefully selected to get through the metal detector he was sure to encounter if he was able to get into the convention center at all, which was damn unlikely without her. There was no way to tell where she’d gone, and he was torn between going out to look for her and staying put in case she returned.
His phone rang. “Ian, I’ve got some bad news,” said Cowboy, the tone of his voice even more foreboding than his words. “Sloan missed his check-in this morning, and Moto’s showing three more members of SVX landing on a plane in Mexico City the day after the fire.”
“What?” Razorback’s brain seemed to squeeze, his vision going dim as he broke out in a terrified sweat. Selena was with Sloan. Selena was with Sloan and something was terribly wrong if Sloan hadn’t called into HERO Force on time. “How late is he?”
“Two hours. Cowboy’s team just went wheels up in Atlanta.”
“Two hours!” That was a goddamn eternity. “They can’t get there fast enough!” He pushed his shoulders back, the adrenaline in his bloodstream commanding him to run, fight, anything but stand helplessly in a hotel room thousands of miles away.
“The Mexican authorities are helping us look for them. Did Jackie see anyone who recognized her? Could they have figured out she was there?”
“No, nobody—” Razorback froze, remembering Jackie at the front desk of the hotel, giving her name for her own room. “Christ, Cowboy. The front desk. She gave her name last night at the front desk, so it’s in the computer.”
“Goddamn it! If SVX found Sloan and Selena, then they knew Jackie wasn’t there. The convention is the first place they’d look for her. They’re going to use Selena to keep her mother from exposing McGrath.”
“Or else they’ve already killed her.” The words were out of Razorback’s mouth before they registered in his brain. It was impossible to comprehend, yet his military mind knew it was the most likely scenario. SVX could coerce Jackie into cooperating without proof of life. They had no intention of leaving her alive, anyway.
Nausea threatened his usually strong stomach as he took off running, the phone still in his hand. He grabbed his key card and dashed into the hallway, pounding on the door to Jackie’s room. It fell open at the first touch. Tool marks between the key card device and the wood told him it had been tampered with. “Jesus. Someone broke into her room.” He ran inside, searching for something, anything at all.
“She texted me and said she was going to the convention alone. It was a ruse. A cover.” This couldn’t be happening. Jackie had been taken from her room right under his damn nose. His training took over when emotions would have locked his mind like a steel trap. “I’ll have hotel security pull up the surveillance video. You find Selena, you hear? Just find my girl.”
