Stripping Her Defenses (11 page)

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

I opened the door, still holding my bat, and blocked the doorway so Declan couldn’t just walk in. I might be saving him from bad-ass Mrs. McGillicutty, but that didn’t mean I had to let him into my home.

He turned to look at me, still too shocked by the itty bitty woman with silver blue hair wearing her white Dobak and glaring at him like he was a nuisance to society.

I wasn’t so convinced about Declan being a nuisance to society, but he’d always been a nuisance to women in general.

Mrs. McGillicutty leaned over until she could look around Declan at me and then asked, “Is he bothering you, precious? I’m still warmed up from practice down at the senior center, and I can probably front snap kick his posterior down the stairs and out of here.”

Declan snorted, looked at me to see my one eyebrow raised in a ‘Are you stupid’ look, and then he looked back to my elderly neighbor in confusion.

Whipping his head back around, he whispered, “She’s serious?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer.

“You’re darn tootin’ I’m serious, young man! Don’t you look down on me because I’m a woman with wrinkles. I’ll have you know you’re looking at the Dade County 60 and Up Tae Kwon Do 2014 Champion. That means not only can I kick your rear end, I can do it without needing any arthritis cream afterwards!”

Apparently, I shouldn’t have asked fate, God, or whoever the hell it had been listening to me if it could get any worse. It just had. I had to save the big bad
seal
idiot from a little, old lady.

Grabbing Declan’s arm, I pulled him backwards, until he was standing in my apartment. Looking back at Mrs. McGillicutty, I apologized, “I’m so sorry, Nancy. This is just a misunderstanding. I’ll straighten it out and send him on his way. This won’t happen again.”

She didn’t look very convinced with my plea. “You don’t put up with any of his nonsense, Kara. If you need me to kick him out, I’ll be here.”

I heard Declan snort a laugh behind me, and as much as I didn’t want to see my former brother-in-law, I had to agree with him over the hilarity of the situation.

Doing my best not to laugh, I reigned in the smile threatening to spread across my face and managed to keep it to a small tilt of one side of my lips. The old woman’s eyes narrowed on the action, and I replied hastily before I accidentally managed to piss her off.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. McGillicutty. I promise I’ll let you know if I need you. Hope you have a good day!”

Giving her my most sincere smile, I walked back through my doorway and closed the door behind me. After that little episode, I’d decided Mrs. McGillicutty was the shit, and I wanted to be like her when I grew up.

Propping my bat back up against the corner by my door, I turned to face Declan who popped up an eyebrow as he looked at the bat.

“I didn’t think this neighborhood was that rough. Surely you don’t need to use that with the bad ass ninja living across the hall from you?”

It was my turn to snort. Shaking my head, I replied, “No, it’s not a rough neighborhood. That doesn’t mean, as a single woman living alone, I shouldn’t take precautions when answering my door.”

He nodded his head. “Good thinking.” He then gave me a meaningful look and said, “Glad you’re taking care of yourself. You damn near worried us all to death when you disappeared on us, Kara. I thought Grandpa Pat would have a heart attack.”

Throwing my hand up in the direction of his face, I snapped, “Stop the madness already. You’re so full of shit. Grandpa Pat was healthier than some thirty-year-olds when I left, so don’t bother to tell that lie again. Looks like some things haven’t changed. You’re still throwing around your ‘I’m an expert interrogator who likes to fuck with people’s heads’ persona.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he gave me a disapproving look. “Grandpa Pat might have been healthy as a horse—hell, he still is—but the stress and heartbreak from having his ‘wee Kara’ disappear after losing his great-grandson aged him twenty years over night. You forget you weren’t just married to Riley; you were married to his family that loved you, too. But I guess, if you can abandon the man you love, the rest of us were easy to leave behind, as well.”

Oh… low blow.

Perhaps I deserved it; nonetheless, it was very painful.

Crossing my own arms over my chest, I looked down at my red painted toe nails, avoiding Declan’s penetrating stare. This was why I hadn’t wanted to talk to him. I didn’t want to face the fact that I’d hurt more than Riley. Denial seemed like a great place to live sometimes.

A strained silence fell between us. My mind was blank. I was struggling to find the right words to say since I still firmly held onto the belief that Riley would get my explanation and no one else. Maybe down the road, after I’d settled things with my ex-husband, I could muster up the courage and energy to write Grandpa Pat and his wife a letter explaining why I’d done what I’d done, but I was nowhere near that yet. It might seem selfish or bitchy not coughing up explanations for everyone right away, but I did have my reasons for it.

You see, I didn’t suffer from depression every moment of every day of the year. There were certain things, such as facing bad memories or too much stress, that could trigger the depression. Once a depression cycle started, though, it was almost impossible to pull myself out of it on my own. There was no ‘running the course’ with depression the way one did with a cold. No, once that chemical imbalance started in my body, nothing short of medication could balance me out again.

As a result, not talking to the rest of the Sullivans was me cowardly avoiding a situation that I worried might trigger a serious depression cycle. Because, after I gave them my apologies and the ‘why’s’ they were looking for, they would want to talk about
him
.

I still had a hard time talking about
him
.

My little boy.

Moreover, as if talking about my little boy wasn’t hard enough, that subject always brought me back to another heartbreaking topic.

I couldn’t have any more children.

The accident had scarred me so badly inside and out that I’d never be able to carry another child. Therefore, in essence, everything I’d wanted in life had been ripped away from me the day of the accident. My little boy, my future chance of other children, and my temporary sanity, which eventually led to the loss of my husband because I’d pushed him away.

“You ran out on him again last night. Do you know what that did to him, Kara? Do you know that he damn near tore that entire club apart looking for you? He almost got into a physical altercation with the Regulators’ Club President, Vice President, and Sergeant At Arms because they wouldn’t give him your contact information.”

God, I bet Ice was ready to strangle me by now. And what had I done to poor Riley? But wait? What had Declan just said?

Raising my head, I glared at Declan. “If they didn’t give you the information, then how did you know to come here?”

Raising his hand, Declan tapped his fingers a few times against his lips as he narrowed his eyes at me, analyzing me. God, I hated when he did that! It was like he was seeing through flesh and bone into your soul. Into the very heart of a person. It was one of the reason’s Declan had excelled as an interrogator for the Navy.

Dropping his hand back to his crossed arms, he murmured, “Let’s just say that our new job comes with considerable perks, such as an intelligence officer whose sole job is to give me whatever information I request, no questions asked.”

Whoa. What the hell were Riley and Declan knee deep in now?

He didn’t give me a chance to ask.

“Ice assured Riley that you’d be back at After Midnight tonight for your show. You don’t want to talk to me, fine, but you owe my brother an explanation. You owe him some peace of fuckin’ mind, Kara. Don’t disappear tonight. If you ever loved him at all, you’ll give him the peace he so very much deserves. Do we understand each other?”

Yeah, I understood him all right. While he was right, that didn’t mean I was going to take his attitude. That was a part of the new Kara that Declan had yet to experience. The part of me I’d discovered when I’d opened myself to figuring out who I really was underneath all of the depression, paranoia, and screwed up concepts.

The good thing was, I had no problem introducing him to the new Kara.

Pursing my lips, I nodded then said, “I’ll talk to him tonight. But, Declan?”

“Yeah?”

“The next time you talk to me like that, I’m going to take my baseball bat and break your fucking knee caps.”

Chapter

11

Riley

“We need the techies to dig up anything they have on movements to and from Mexico from the last couple of years. We also need to know what’s left of the Rivera Cartel after our rescue mission. And last, but certainly not motherfuckin’ least, we need to know who and what the Regulators MC really is.” Lucas started to object to my statement, but I merely raised my voice and spoke over him as I debriefed Jaxon on last night’s meeting. “Because I can tell you what they’re
not
, and that’s some small time outlaw bikers.”

I watched as Jaxon’s face went blank, as if he’d flipped the switch off for all of his emotions and became a robot. “I’ll have the intelligence officers give us whatever they can on the Rivera Cartel and movements from Mexico. Until we get that information back, I want you, Declan, and Lucas to go over the information Ice gave you on the missing strippers. Read the police reports, look for any little clue the cops might have missed. Were the girls seen talking to anyone just before they disappeared? Stuff like that. Anything that gives you a red flag.

“Then get a map and record the location of every strip club in south Florida along with where the women went missing. Look for a pattern. The rest of the team will continue their undercover surveillance on the other strip clubs in the area. Make sure to pop into either of the Regulators strip clubs and keep up appearances for the public as bonafide members of the MC.”

“I am not going to Alibi and watching dicks swinging on the stage!” Lucas snapped.

Jaxon turned and gave my fellow teammate a withering stare. “If I want you to walk into a male strip club your contact owns
because one of the major players in the Regulators MC is there to keep up appearances, then you’ll damn well do it. Whether the men are flashing their cocks or not. Understood, Young?”

Thoroughly chastised by our Commanding Officer, Lucas somehow managed not to glare at Jaxon when he answered “Yes, sir.”

Jaxon turned to walk out of the room, and I should have let him leave after Lucas’s fuck up, but Ice had rubbed me the wrong way last night. As a result, I was now like a dog with a bone when it came to the motorcycle club’s President.

“What about the Regulators, Commander? What do you want us to do about them?”

Jaxon paused, turned his head so he was looking at me over his shoulder, and then said, “You’re to do nothing and ask nothing about the Regulators Motorcycle Club. If I find out you went digging into them for any reason, you won’t like what will happen to you.”

What the fuck? Had Jaxon just threatened me?

“You’re telling me it’s okay that someone outside of our operation knows about Mexico? What’s the point of being a secret, undercover black ops unit if our movements are known?”

Jaxon pivoted on his heel to face me. “What makes you think we’re the government’s only solution to their problems?”

With that cryptic answer, Jaxon once again turned his back on the room and walked out. I mulled over his words as I stared at the closed door. Had I thought we were the government’s only undercover black ops unit? No.

Frankly, I’d call every single one of the government head honchos dumb fucks if they only had one highly trained team to help handle their occasional problems. Would I have ever thought the Regulators Motorcycle Club was one of those teams? Fuck no. They looked like a bunch of hooligans that happened to be trained killers.

Of course, now that I thought about it, technically, the Ex Ops Team was a bunch of hooligans and trained killers, so I really had no room to judge. That didn’t mean a part of me wouldn’t still like to find some reason to knock Ice down a peg or two. After his vague admission of how well he knew Kara, I would love to rip him apart limb from limb.

I didn’t want anyone to know my wife inside and out, other than me. I didn’t care how irrational that sounded since I hadn’t exactly been completely celibate since our divorce. Still, the thought of someone else’s hands roaming her body, another person’s lips kissing places only I should know, the possibility that someone could love her…

I was the only man who was supposed to love her.

Cherish her.

It fuckin’ burned that I might not be the only one who’d done those things.

“Sullivan, I trust you with my life.” Lucas’s words brought me out of my thoughts, and I turned to face him. He was obviously pissed, and that anger was directed at me. “But you and the men on our team are not the only ones I’ve given that rare distinction to. Before you all, it was them. I’ll always trust them. You should get where I’m coming from. Ice and Hammer were with me through some harrowing shit I cannot and do not want to relive by telling you about. Nevertheless, they’re my brothers; maybe not by blood, but by actions. Do you understand that?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I get you.”

“Good, because the next time you try to throw their asses under the bus because you’re pissed Ice did your girl, it’ll be me you have to deal with, not them. Now start helping me look through these fucking files before I completely forget I actually like your ass and I stab you instead.”

If I didn’t understand why Lucas was so pissed off, I would have knocked him the fuck out for talking to me that way. The problem was, I did get it. I had men I’d had to trust with my life, and the brotherhood that was forged in times of war could be much stronger than any blood brother one might have. Therefore, in other words, I had to take that threat and eat it.

Jesus, today sucked.

~~~