“I’ll leave that one for you and Sarge. Let’s focus on the mission.”
Because I sure as hell would not be dating Wavy Bollinger despite whatever there had been in that moment between us as I’d pushed her back against the wall. I hadn’t been sure what I was going to do as I’d stepped into her personal space.
Warn her that I was dangerous and she should keep that smile far away from me?
Tell her that her instincts hadn’t been off—I wasn’t Mosaic, but I was definitely dangerous to someone like her?
Drown in those ridiculously green eyes while kissing her senseless?
Instead, I’d given her advice on how to more effectively attack me next time. All in all, probably the smartest thing I could have done for either of us.
With who I was and what I did, contact with another person was never casual, especially not with a woman. But that honest appreciation in her eyes—before she’d wanted to knock me unconscious—had caught me off guard.
She’d had no idea who I was.
Some women were attracted to the power that came with my position at Zodiac. Some liked to know they were with a former Navy SEAL. Damn near all were attracted to my bank account.
Wavy had been attracted to the guy at her diner to get coffee.
It didn’t matter. Nothing was going to happen.
“Let’s just get the info we need and get out of this damn state,” I said.
“Roger that, boss. But if we can’t talk about your past with Mosaic, can we at least talk about you smiling this morning at the diner?”
I shot him a look. “I did not smile at Wavy this morning.”
I had been very careful not to smile at her. One, I wasn’t a big smiler, and two, I didn’t want to give anyone the impression that I was here for anything other than business.
But hell if it wasn’t hard not to smile at Wavy Bollinger. She smiled at every fucking person she saw whether she knew them well or not. She made jokes, made people feel comfortable and at ease. Everybody liked her.
“You didn’t smile at her,” Landon said. “You smiled when we walked into the Frontier Diner and you saw she was working. This cutest little, OMG, my crush and her tray are here smile.”
Landon wasn’t wrong. I had smiled. Because I had been glad Wavy had been working this morning so I’d been able to see her. Crazy as it sounded, there was something about her presence that…soothed a part of me.
She’d chatted with us for a long time, despite being a little embarrassed about the tray incident.
She’d brought me a slice of pie. Even though it had been breakfast time. But when my eyes had met hers, the only thing I had been able to think about was the feel of her fingers wiping pie off of me the night before. And how it would be worth having pie staining another set of clothes to feel them again.
“Yeah, that smile. You’re thinking about her now, aren’t you?”
I definitely wasn’t going to provide him with that intel. “I should have fired you years ago.”
“You can’t fire me. I know too much. You’d have to kill me.”
“That can be arranged,” I said.
But we both knew I couldn’t run Zodiac without him. Landon, Sarge, some of my other core team members…I trusted them with my life. If I died, my fortune and the Zodiac Tactical company would continue on in their very capable hands. They were my family. The ones I trusted above all others.
Family wasn’t always blood, and blood wasn’t always family. I had learned that lesson the hard way.
“If you bring up Wavy Bollinger or my past with Mosaic again, I’m going to make good on my threat to put a cap in your ass.”
Landon blew a kiss at me in the way only he could, but he grew serious as we got closer to the Hemingway building. “You sure this plan of ours is a good idea? You did hear the nerds tell us that the technology they gave us might not work, right?”
“Yeah, all five thousand times they said it.” I knew it was a risk, but at this point I was not willing to give up any lead that might give us the upper hand with Mosaic. Kendrick and Neo had discovered that this building, with its huge underground bunker, had ties to Mosaic. We had to move quickly if we wanted any details.
“I still think you should let me head down into the underground section and you stay and pretend to be the interested party.”
“I can do it. I’m not sending anybody I care about into a situation where they could get captured by Mosaic.”
Even if the thought of entering an underground, windowless set of rooms already had my entire body tense.
“You can’t protect every single person every single moment,” Landon responded. “Putting yourself at higher risk in order to make sure everyone else is safer is not the way to go. Like setting yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm, that sort of thing.”
I shook my head. This was nonnegotiable. “They have Bronwyn. I’m not taking a chance on them getting you too.”
Landon didn’t argue further. He was my friend, and I trusted him with my life. But ultimately, I was the boss, and I was not going to budge on this.
“Besides,” I added, “I’m too recognizable considering my history with Mosaic.”
“Suit yourself. If you get killed, ‘Landon Black, CEO of Zodiac Tactical’ will have a nice ring to it.”
I drove by the building. It was pretty nondescript on the outside—nothing to draw attention.
Landon gave a dramatic sigh. “Just once I wish someone would throw up a Bad Guys Hang Out Here sign so we know we have the right place.”
I parked around the back of the building, close to the door, and we got out. “You just do your thing with people, and I’ll see if I can get us any information.”
Landon was good with people. Good at reading them, good at talking to them, good at giving them what they needed so they would trust him. He would have no trouble pretending to be a rich snob who wanted to rent out half of the building and expected everyone to pay attention to him as he toured the facilities.
We placed the comm units in our ears and tested them. I would be going in as his assistant, keeping my head down and making my escape at the scheduled time.
“Ready,” he said. “Finally, I get to be the boss for a while. As it should be.”
“In your dreams.”
We didn’t make it ten feet inside the front door before we were met by a security guard and required to walk through a metal detector. My tech team had prepared us for that, so we weren’t carrying any weapons, at least not any metal ones. We both had tranquilizer darts that could put a tango down for a couple hours.
Also, we could both kill the security guard with our bare hands before he had a chance to draw his weapon.
We made it through, and I kept my head tucked deep into the electronic tablet I was carrying as part of my cover as Landon—in Landon style—charmed the front receptionist. We waited as the building’s rental representative made his way to the lobby.
“Mr. Ashton-Phelps.” The guy rushed over to shake Landon’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you in person. I’m so glad you could make it here this afternoon.”
Ashton-Phelps? I rolled my eyes while keeping my head lowered. This was why Landon shouldn’t be allowed to choose his own fake ID.