Leah glanced back and forth between them. There was history here, but she couldn’t fathom what it was. Had Marcus and Mercedes been lovers at one time? She didn’t think so. Mercedes wasn’t his type at all. But why else would he have leaned so heavily on the word “lover?”
“That’s none of your fucking business,” Mercedes snapped.
“Considering I’ve killed three people tonight because of what he gave to Leah, I’d say it’s very much my business,” he shot back and finally got to his feet. He’d pulled off one of the dead men’s boots and now wore them instead of going barefoot.
“We don’t have time for this,” Leah interrupted. Someone was ripping through the jungle at her back, coming in fast. No doubt the men from the surf camp. “The camp was overrun. That’s why I came back. I thought Mercedes was with them because she’d come from that direction, but—”
“They heard those shots,” Marcus finished. “Let’s continue this convo somewhere we’re less likely to get shot, yeah?”
“No,” Mercedes said. “Hit me. They think I’m with them. Let’s let them go on thinking that.”
“What if they kill first, ask questions later?”
“They won’t. Hit me. Knock me out. C’mon,” she goaded when he still hesitated. “It’s not like you haven’t done worse to—”
Marcus hauled back and punched her.
Mercedes grunted and staggered a little, but then straightened and laughed. “You hit like a girl.”
Oh, for God’s sake. They didn’t have time for this. Leah grabbed the gun from Mercedes’s hand and slammed the butt against Mercedes’s head. Mercedes’s eyes widened, then a dopey smile spread over her face. “Nah,” she said, words slurring. “I was wrong. She hits like a girl. Take notes, Deangelo.” Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed.
Marcus stared, jaw hanging open. “Leah. Holy shit.”
“We didn’t have time for you to pull your punch. She wants to stay behind with these psychos, who are we to argue?”
“You’re right.” Marcus shook off his shock and held out a hand. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Nine
Hornet Headquarters, Wyoming
The kid was useless.
Ian scowled as his trainee, Remington “Remy” Hale, again blew himself to hell and back. Metaphorically. Though he was currently wishing the explosive ordnance simulation had been real. At least then he’d no longer have a headache.
Last fall, when Quinn had ordered him to start training Remy in explosive ordnance disposal or else he’d be out of a job, he’d figured all he had to do was be his usual charming self and the kid would quit.
But Remy was like a tick. He stuck, no matter what Ian threw at him. An eternally happy, annoyingly optimistic tick.
“Well,” Remy said and grinned through the visor of his bomb suit. “I didn’t need that hand anyway.”
“Kid, you didn’t just take off a hand. There was enough explosive material in that ordnance to blow this compound from the map.”
His smile faltered and he looked down at the fake bomb. “Oh.”
How this kid had made it through Quinn’s vetting process was anyone’s guess. Ian certainly wouldn’t have picked him out of all the other trainees for EOD. He didn’t have the patience or the attention span necessary for playing with things that go boom.
Ian’s eyelid was twitching. He pressed a palm to it to make it stop. “Run the sim again.”
He watched the kid’s every move closely, still scowling so hard his jaw ached. The faint reflection on the safety glass in front of him showed deep lines carved into his forehead and around his mouth. In that instant, he saw his father staring back at him, and it startled him so much he took a step back.
Fuck.
His phone rang.
He gulped back a surge of bile and ran a shaking hand over his mouth. Even at thirty-four years old, any reminder of his father scared the living hell out of him. Some badass he was.
The phone rang again. He snapped it from his pocket and answered without checking the number. “What?”
“Aw, sweet as ever, I see,” Mercedes Raya said.
He looked at the screen. The number was unavailable. Harvard and Sami, HORNET’s computer gurus, would laugh at that unavailability if he asked them to track down the number. But, then again, did he really want anyone to know she’d contacted him?
No. That might stir up questions he’d rather not answer. As of right now, everyone blamed Marcus for her escape. Since the guy had been so shit-faced, he had no memory of that night, and Seth also had a handy bit of amnesia from the blow to the head, it all worked in Ian’s favor. He’d like to keep it that way.
He put the phone back to his ear. “What do you want?”
“I missed you.”
His heart did a traitorous little tap dance. Fuck, what was that? He didn’t miss her. He didn’t even like her. He ground his teeth to quash the feeling. “You have ten seconds then I’m hanging up. Ten, nine—”
“Your buddy Deangelo is in trouble.”
Ian stopped the countdown. “How do you know?”
“Same way you know where I am right now.”
Sumba, Indonesia. At least when he’d checked her whereabouts on the app last night, that was where she still was. Exactly the same place she’d been for the last few months. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.” He could practically hear her eye roll. “I haven’t kept your jacket all these months out of sentimentality, asshole. I figured I’d need your help someday. That day has come.”
“Give me one good reason to help you.”
“We both want Harrison Stead to suffer and Defion to shrivel away to dust.”
Fuck. The one thing he couldn’t resist. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on Marcus.”
“He’s there on Sumba?”
“I thought you didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.” She scoffed, then added, “Forget it. Doesn’t matter. Danny Giancarelli’s widow showed up. I thought she meant to drag him back to civilization, but shit went sideways. Guys with guns showed up. Leah apparently had some kind of flash drive in her possession that they want. And—” She cut herself off as male voices sounded in the background. Not English. Russian.