Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
There was no time to dig into it. It was almost time to go.
The evening before we flew out, Kian gathered everyone for a briefing. We didn’t have a high-tech ops center to hold it in. We didn’t even have chairs. We sat on crates in the main room, looking at a satellite photo Kian had taped to the wall. I looked around at the scene: at the broken windows and oil-stained floor, at the ragtag bunch we’d assembled. Are we going to be able to pull this off? We were Olivia’s only hope.
Kian pointed to the satellite photo. “The doctors are being held here, in a cartel camp way out in the rainforest. You’ll chopper in, get them out, then hike to the extraction point. That’s going to be the hard part. The cartel will be on your tail and you’ll have to stay ahead of them for a full thirty-six hours.”
“Why’d the cartel kidnap the doctors in the first place?” asked Danny, stirring a mug of tea.
Kian shook his head. “We don’t know.”
“No ransom?” asked JD, rubbing his stubble. “No demands? Doesn’t make sense.”
I leaned forward, frustrated. There was no time to get sidetracked. “Doesn’t matter why they did it,” I said. “We just need to get her back.” The others looked round at me and I felt my face heat. “Them. Get them back.”
We moved on and dug into the details of transport, weapons, and supplies. When the briefing ended, Cal cornered me by the locker-room-with-no-lockers. He gazed at me for a while before he spoke. “This lady doctor, she someone you know?”
I looked away. “She was the doc at the prison I was in. I just want to see her safe. I owe her.”
Cal’s blond brows furrowed skeptically.
I stared back at him stubbornly. “Being sweet on her would be a lousy reason to run an op.”
Cal shook his head. “No. It’d be the best reason.” He slapped me on the shoulder and walked away.
I looked down at my shoulder, a little thrown. It had been a long time since anyone had done that.
On the morning of our flight, Bethany came to see Cal off. He knelt and ruffled Rufus’s fur, telling him to be good. “I’m worried about him,” he muttered to Bethany. “This’ll be the longest we’ve been apart in years.”
Bethany looked up at him and blinked, and I could tell she was fighting back tears. "I’ll take care of him,” she promised. She sniffed. “We’ll take care of each other.”
Bradan had someone to see him off, too, a woman named Stacey with sleek, dark hair. Whatever was going on with Bradan, she seemed to cut straight through it: as soon as she showed up, Bradan’s whole body relaxed and he seemed…normal. It was obvious the two were crazy about each other. When it came time to go, I watched as they went from an embrace to holding hands to brushing fingertips, maintaining contact until the very last second.
I felt that pang of jealousy again, like I had with Kian and Emily. Stupid. I’d never had that sort of relationship with anyone, always sticking to one-night stands and quick flings. You can’t have anything real, not when you know Interpol might break your door down in the middle of the night and you’ll have to grab a bag and run.
I turned away from Bradan and Stacey. I had a plan and I was going to stick to it.
I’d get Olivia back, because I owed her.
I’d fuck her, to get her out of my system.
I’d find a way to slip away from the team and then I’d disappear into the sunset with the gold.
Alone, just like I’d always been.
11
OLIVIA
I crept along the hallway, my footsteps swallowed by the thick carpet. I could hear him humming to himself and I homed in on the sound. I pushed open a heavy wooden door and—
Gabriel was wearing black suit pants that hugged his ass and an expensive white cotton shirt turned almost translucent by the sunlight streaming in from the window. I could see the smooth globes of his shoulders, the curve of his pecs and the dark ink of his tattoos. He’d just lifted a painting down from the wall and he held it casually as he gave me one of those wicked grins. “Well, hey, Doc! Come to join me?”
I glanced down at myself. I was in my white coat and sensible shoes, the way I always dressed in my dreams. And that confirmed to my semi-sleeping brain that this was a dream, that it had to be. But my brain boxed that thought up and pushed it aside. It needed this.
I looked around at the lavish bedroom, at the four-poster bed and antique furniture. “You have to get out of here!” I told him. My jaw dropped as I saw the necklace dangling from his pants pocket, the emerald pendant as big as a duck egg. “You can’t just—You can’t just take things!”