Home > Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1)(5)

Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1)(5)
Author: Lori Ryan

Of course, that got messy and there were plenty of people back home who thought she shouldn’t be here. But she went where the President and her State Department bosses told her to go, and they’d told her to come talk to Demir.

Heath’s voice when he broke into her thoughts was raspy but there was a gentleness to it. “You should get some sleep, Nori. We need to move again soon and you’ll feel better if you get some rest before then.”

“Eleanor,” she said.

“What?”

She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “Eleanor. No one calls me Nori anymore.”

His grin was slow and so damned sexy she almost forgot for a minute that fifteen years had passed since they’d seen each other. That she had no claim on this man anymore. No right to be thinking the things she was thinking about him. No right to feel the reaction her body was having to his touch.

“Eleanor, then,” he said softly.

His words were simple, but they snapped her back to reality and she stepped away from him. She wasn’t Nori and they weren’t in high school anymore.

She was Eleanor Bonham. She worked for the State Department and she was about to negotiate an agreement that could mean the difference between maintaining the strides they’d made in the fight on terror or losing it all.

It was probably silly, but the recitation of who and what she was, grounded her. She crossed to the bed but stared at the mattress instead of laying down. “I don’t think I can sleep.”

She sank to the floor in front of the bed, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. She heard more than felt him come and settle beside her. Even as he sat, he was still on duty, on guard. She could tell.

It was more than just the fact that he still had knives and guns strapped to him in more places than she could count. It was the way he was constantly scanning even the small space around them. It was the way she could tell he had an ear cocked to the outside even as he seemed to give her his attention.

“Don’t worry, Eleanor. We’re going to get you in and out of this summit with Demir and get you home to your family. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She didn’t reply but she felt the tightening in her gut at his words. She didn’t have a family to go home to. Not really, anyway. But that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have right now.

“So, what are the others out there doing? You said they need a plan. There’s no plan for how you’re going to get me across the border into Kazarus?” She stood again as she spoke, walking the few paces to the other side of the room before turning and walking back.

Shouldn’t elite forces like his have plans with backup plans, and then some?

If he was bothered by her questions, he didn’t show it. Then again, she had the feeling he didn’t let anyone see anything he didn’t want them to see.

The man before her was highly disciplined and clearly every bit the elite warrior special forces were said to be. Pride at who he’d become swelled through her. Not that she’d had anything to do with it, but still. He was clearly damned good at what he did.

“We know where we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. We need to set some things in motion on the ground to implement those plans.” He leveled her with a look. “And we’ll be setting up a few decoy plans as well, giving whoever is gunning for you something else to chase for a while.”

His phone buzzed and he looked at the screen before looking back to her. “Your assistant and the rest of your team are safe.”

Eleanor felt a rush of relief at the news. Not that they all didn’t go into this work knowing the risks, but still, she wouldn’t forgive herself if anything happened to them because someone was trying to kill her.

“Who has them? You said it was another Delta Team?”

He shook his head, tapping back something on the screen before turning his attention to her. “I said no such thing. Stop putting words into my mouth.” He grinned her way. “But, yeah, another team has them. We’ve worked with these guys before. One of them, Ris, was a buddy of mine when I was in Ranger school.”

“Ranger school? So you’re a Ranger?”

“Once a Ranger, always a Ranger.”

She had a feeling if she was any other person they were protecting, he’d be saying nothing, but he seemed to be playing with her and she had a feeling she’d get the information out of him soon. They would have gotten a dossier on her when they got the assignment. He knew she meant it when she said her clearance was higher than his.

Even so, he was being vague. It was in a special forces operative’s blood not to reveal who they were and what their assignments were.

Eleanor watched him carefully. He didn’t seem to hate his life. Didn’t seem miserable with his decision to enter the Army. Since she was the reason he’d had to make that decision, it mattered to her.

She sat on the floor next to him again and stretched her legs out in front of them. She wanted to lean into him, letting him put his arm around her like he had when they were young, but she didn’t. She still felt the constant hum of arousal when she was near him and that just irritated the hell out of her.

She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t the kind of woman who let attraction distract her from her job. Not to mention, it was stupid for her body to be even remotely aware of anyone of the opposite sex at a time like this. She needed to get her shit together.

She focused on what he’d just said. “Ris and you were Rangers together?”

She didn’t get to hear the answer to that question. Heath went tight and sat up, motioning her to be quiet.

In a heartbeat, he sprang into action, throwing himself over her and pushing her to the ground as what sounded like an explosion came from the front of the apartment.

Eleanor screamed and covered her ears, but she was too late to stop the ringing. Heath put an arm around her waist and hauled her up at the same time she saw his other arm come up with a gun trained on the door. He shoved her behind him as gunfire rang out.

When shards of wood exploded out of the window frame behind her she realized it wasn’t only Heath’s weapon she was hearing.

No, all that noise couldn’t come from one weapon. Eleanor watched in horror as four men flooded the small space between Heath and her. She was equally horrified when two of those men fell to Heath’s bullets.

Heath lifted the bed they’d been leaning on moments before with one arm and she realized it was little more than a cot with a mattress. He shoved it on its side in front of them, giving them the barest bit of cover.

“The window!” Heath kept himself between Eleanor and the men firing as he pushed her back to the window. “Open it and go out on the fire escape!”

“What about you?”

She thought she almost heard a smirk in his voice when he answered her with a “Right behind you, babe.”

Her hands fumbled and she flinched again and again as she shoved open the windowpane. Then she was climbing through it and he was moving behind her.

She heard Heath grunt in pain and she was pushed to the metal floor of the fire escape as he fell on top of her. She heard the sickening thud of his head hitting the metal railing.

“Oh God, Heath!”

There was blood. A lot of it. His forehead was bleeding and his left arm was drenched in blood where he’d been shot.

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