Fatal Courage: Shadow Force International, Book 3 (Shadow Force International Romantic Suspense Series) (13 page)

“You’re so cynical.”

She said it with humor, but she was right. He
was
cynical. Angry. Hurt.

Addicted to a drug sitting right next to him, close enough to touch but still completely out of reach.

He wanted her back in his life. Not just for another one-night stand. He wanted to date her, think about something long-term.

Spies didn’t do long-term.

Ruby was talking again. “…and he’s not a hippy. Dan’s a geologist. Works with rocks and stuff for one of the universities.”

“No wonder he doesn’t have friends.”

“Jaxon.” A reprimand.

He turned to her, as best as his big body could do in the compact car. Truce time was up. “Ruby, who was that on the video?”

She opened her mouth to answer, then shut it with a shake of her head. “If I tell you what I’m thinking, you have to swear not to go off half-cocked or tell anyone else until I confirm it.”

Shit. That could only mean…

Emit’s voice interrupted him. “Place is clear, but someone left Ruby a message. You better get up here.”

Jax clenched his teeth, trying to hold in the expletives on his tongue. He tapped his comm to open his end. “Roger that,” he growled.

Rory was already out of the SUV, fighting with his crutches.

“It appears
Agent Brown
is two steps ahead of us,” Jax said to Ruby. “He left you a message upstairs.”

Before he could open his door, Ruby was out and running for her apartment.

Chapter Eight

_____________________

______________________________________________________

R
UBY’S
B
REATH
C
AUGHT
in her throat the moment she swept through the door.

The place was destroyed.

The couch had been upended, the cushions slashed. Her few personal items—books and papers—lay torn and trampled on the floor. The flat screen TV had been ripped from the wall, a crater in the center where someone had stomped on the screen. Her laptop was missing from the desk; the drawers had been yanked out and dumped.

Emit emerged from the kitchen, a bug scanner in hand. “The place is a wreck, but there are no listening devices or hidden cameras. Any idea what they were after?”

Me
.

It was a total gut reaction—she had no real basis for thinking someone was after her, but since the near miss at the club and now this…

“The laptop, maybe.” Her voice sounded strained, giving away that she didn’t believe it. “It was on the desk.”

He walked to the desk, stepping over the scattered drawers. “What was on it? Anything top secret?”

“Of course not.”

Jax came up behind her and whistled under his breath as he pulled up short. “Fucking A. What the hell?”

Ruby steadied her shaky legs and moved farther into the living room, avoiding the broken glass from a mirror that had been jerked from the wall. “There was nothing classified on my laptop,” she said to Emit.

“You’ll need to do an inventory,” he said, snapping a picture with his phone of the destruction. “Jewelry, cash, weapons. See if anything else is missing.

Shinedown appeared in the doorway from the bedroom, holding up a pair of sneakers. “Better put these on.”

Ruby accepted the shoes and slipped her feet into them. She bent down to collect the papers, mostly to give herself something to do. Her fingers felt stiff, her mind cataloging what was mostly bills. Water, electric, Internet.

“Hey,” Jax said softly as he bent down to help. He reached out and took the pile of papers from her hands. “Why don’t you grab a shower and a change of clothes? I’ve got this.”

“This wasn’t Elliot. He wouldn’t do this.”

“Is it possible he was looking for something?”

“Like what?”

“Like something on that laptop?” Emit supplied.

“There was nothing important on there, and why would he trash the place if all he wanted was the laptop?”

The logic made sense; she could see it in Jax’s face. If it was a simple grab-and-go, there was no reason to vandalize the apartment. It didn’t make sense.

Unless someone was trying to throw them off track.

Or scare her.

Jax apparently followed her train of thought. “They might have taken the laptop to make it look like a robbery. Or trashed the place to make it look like a random B&E when they were after the laptop.”

“But why? I didn’t have anything of value intel-wise. To Elliot or anyone else.”

Shinedown scooted the flat screen over to the side. “Maybe they think you do.”

“Or maybe you do,” Emit added, his sharp eyes sizing her up, “but you don’t realize it.”

Her brain hurt. Literally hurt as blood pounded against her temples. “Whoever did this was looking for Elliot. I’d bet my last paycheck on it, which may be coming sooner than I’d hoped if I don’t get my ass to Director Timm’s office.”

She kicked a torn cushion out of the way, made eye contact with Jax, and cocked her head toward the bedroom.

He followed her through the debris, then stood with her as they surveyed the damage done to her bedroom. The pillows had been split open, the mattress as well. The lamp from the nightstand had been tossed to the floor, breaking the bulb and damaging the shade. Her sparse collection of clothes and shoes lay scattered across the floor.

“This looks personal to me.” Jax eyed the deep gashes in the mattress. “Whoever did this is sending you a strong message, but you’re right. This wasn’t Elliot. This was someone who’s after him.”

Someone who meant business. If she’d been here, no telling what they might have done to her.

But who were “they?”

It was time to stop pulling her punches. She needed help, and like it or not, help was standing next to her. “I need to show you something.”

She went for her cell phone, saw Jax’s eyes tracking her leg again as she hoisted her hemline and pulled the phone from its case on her thigh. Let him stare. She liked the fact that he couldn’t take his eyes off her body when she showed it to him.

Sick, but whatever. He made her feel good about herself, even if he did gawk. He wasn’t like the men who only cared about her sexiness. He treated her with respect, even when he was mad at her. And she’d hurt him, she knew that. Regretted that.

Unfortunately, it came with her job.

She couldn’t get close to anyone. Not without risking her operative status and, possibly, their lives.

No way she would do that. Her job meant everything to her, but risking the life of someone who felt something for her was out of the question. She’d become an agent to save innocent people, not to put them in the line of fire.

Entering her password, she tapped an icon to open the GPS tracking software that would link her to the transmitter she’d hidden in her go-bag. Several seconds passed as the software did its thing, bringing up a map of the area and scanning for the transmitter.

Come on, come on. Where are you, El?

The map shifted, zooming out. Finally a red pin dropped onto a spot. Quite a ways from where they were, but stationary. Stationary was good.

Turning the screen so Jax could see it, she hoped Elliot was immobile because he’d found a place to crash. The other options—kidnapped, dead—weren’t pleasant to consider. “He’s there.”

“Who?”

“Elliot. I gave him my go-bag to help him out. I had a GPS tracker hidden inside the bag.”

Jax’s expression lightened. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He screwed up his forehead and squinted at the map. “Where exactly is that?”

She used her fingers to zoom in. The spot was several hours west of the city in an area she’d never been to. “I don’t know, but we’re going to go find it as soon as I clean up.”

Jax nodded. “I’ll help the guys while you shower. We’ll put security on the place, but tonight, you’re going to a safe house.”

She didn’t like that idea, but night was still hours away. Maybe they would find Elliot and clear up what was going on by then.

“Give me fifteen,” she said, and snatched some clean, if wrinkled, clothes off the floor on her way to the bathroom.

She only wished washing away this mess were as easy as washing off the night’s grime.

R
UBY
W
AS
I
N
the shower and it took all of Jax’s concentration to work on cleaning up her apartment while Emit and Colton installed listening devices and cameras. His brain would much rather shut down than think about her luscious body standing under a stream of hot water.

Because, it seemed, his brain as well as his dick were hardwired into the Ruby Fantasy Channel.
All Ruby, all the time
.

Along with the lust, rage burned under his skin. The look on her face as she’d viewed the damage had nearly done him in.

The fact of the matter was that she’d barely shown any sort of emotion. A slight hitch in her chest, a hard swallow, the tiniest pinch between her eyebrows. But to him, tuned into her every gesture, her every breath, it spoke volumes. Random or not, even the most hardened person felt violated after a break-in. It scared you, shook something deep inside you that went back to your childhood. Security. Safety.

Ruby hadn’t shown it, but it had shaken her too. “I’m going to fucking kill whoever did this,” Jax said as he scooped up broken glass from the floor.

“Who
do
you think did it?” Emit asked.

He dumped the dustpan into the garbage, the glass tinkling as it fell. “No idea.”

Colton tested a camera angle, adjusted it. He’d hidden the tiny thing inside the smoke detector. “You don’t think it was this Agent Brown guy?”

Jax stretched his back. Ruby’s compact car was the size of a sardine can. It felt like it had squished his spine into half its size. “Agent Brown is Elliot, so no, I don’t think it was him. He already visited her and she gave him her go-bag to help him out. If he’d been after something, he would have gone for it then. Plus, he’s just not the kind of guy to do this.” He waved a hand at the destruction.

“Wait,” Emit said. “Elliot impersonated a Homeland agent and took Augustus Nelson from the cops?”

“At this point, I’m not all that sure he was
impersonating
anyone.”

Emit screwed up his face. “You think he’s working for Homeland?”

“As a CIA agent, he’s already under their umbrella. What I can’t figure out is if he’s Homeland undercover inside the CIA or he’s CIA running a deep undercover op on his fellow operatives for Homeland.”

Colton squinted. “Trying to follow that makes my head hurt.”

“Why would Homeland insert one of their own into the Agency?” Emit pondered.

Jax wondered the same. “Only thing I can think of is that they suspect a mole or traitor high in the ranks. Fits with what James said to Ruby.”

Emit nodded. “How does that tie into James and Nelson?”

“No fucking idea,” Jax said, “but my gut’s telling me Elliot may be innocent of the charges I accused him of, or there’s at least a damn good reason he did what he did.”

Emit shoved desk drawers back into their respective places and stuck a bug under one of them. “If he’s Homeland, why didn’t they tell Justice to drop it and not pursue prosecution?”

“Maybe he found out something he shouldn’t have and Homeland wanted to shut him up,” Colton volunteered.

Jax shook his head. “The only good way to shut him up would be to kill him, not send him to a country club prison.”

“We need to talk to Beatrice.” Emit tossed Jax one of the tiny listening devices and pointed at the door. “She’s better at cyphering out conspiracy theories than I am.”

Jax placed the bug on top of the mirror next to the door. “I’m due to check in with her anyway.”

In the hallway outside, he heard the click of dog nails on the stairs. The jingle of keys.

Dan.

“I’ll be right back,” Jax said.

He caught John Lennon Junior unlocking his door. “Hey, man.”

Dan glanced up. “Yes?”

The dog growled for half a second, then wagged its tail.

“Jaxon Sloan.” He held out his hand while Woodstock sniffed his boots. “I’m a friend of Ruby’s and she says you’re a good neighbor. Her place was broken into sometime between midnight and seven this morning. You hear anything weird? See anyone suspicious?”

“Broken into?” Dan’s bloodshot eyes swung right, then left, as if the boogie man was about to jump out at them. “Is Ruby all right?”

“She’s fine, she wasn’t home, but her place is a disaster. Got any ideas who might have paid her a visit?”

“Jeez, I’ve no idea, man. I never heard anything, never saw anyone other than Mrs. Lieberman downstairs when I took Woodstock for her walk this morning.”

Wow. All the crashing and banging around that must have happened and Dan heard none of it?
Dan needs to lay off the weed.
“Mrs. Lieberman, huh? Do you think she might talk to me? Which apartment does she live in? Are there any other neighbors up here that might have heard something?”