He stroked her palms with his thumbs. “I can guarantee you we’ll come away from this in complete mutual agreement.”
Dodger took his time. Anna set off reactions he’d never experienced before. He couldn’t think of anything except what she was doing to him. His slow and easy approach had her clawing at him and the bedding until she succumbed to her orgasm. Then he was finally thrusting into her, driving toward a soul-shattering release. It was as if he came right out of his body. And she was the only thing that held him together. But then he realized that they were holding each other together.
The next thing Dodger knew, someone was shaking his shoulder hard. He turned in the darkened room. “What the bloody hell…” He pulled the sheet over Anna.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, Dodger, but you’ve got to see this. It’s bad. It’s really, God, really bad.”
2-Stroke knelt on the roof of the warehouse, hidden in the shadows, watching the night. A storm was chugging toward them. He could see the slashes of lighning against the dark horizon. The temperature had dropped, and the wind was blowing softly against his face, the air cooling his skin.
Six minutes flat, that’s what it had taken for him to scale the three-story building with a loop of rope he’d slipped around the downspout.
His adrenaline was pumping.
It was time to take down Darko Stjepanić. He wedged himself between an air-conditioning unit on the northwest corner of the warehouse’s tarred roof and the door that led down into the warehouse. He was to breach when he got the word or take care of any squirters thinking they could egress from this roof.
Dressed in black from head to toe, his tac vest black over the top of his uniform, he was invisible in the urban landscape—and so he would remain as long as he had to.
He had a gift for stealth. It was his most valuable tactical skill, the ability to secure a target, move invisible into position, make the kill, and evaporate into thin air. It was what had made his reputation on the team.
But his concentration was suffering from the flashbacks to the night in LA in a dingy lot where he had made his first kill. His bad memories were crashing in on him more and more often.
He slipped his hand inside his assault vest and pressed it against his breastbone, trying to ease the ache he’d had since he’d left the safe house. It was just his breath, caught in a stream of regret—he knew that. Just his heart realizing what he’d done.
He’d killed a kid the same age as his brother.
He’d been wearing a white tunic and it had been starkly red with his blood. He could still hear the mother’s screams echoing eerily in his head.
He was losing it…finally. Something that had been dogging him for so many years.
Rising to his feet, forcing himself to focus on the mission, he adjusted his gear. His sidearm was strapped to his hip within easy reach, the ammo clips for his M4 in the front of his vest.
The warehouse was an outstanding vantage point. He wasn’t specially trained as a sniper, but he was an excellent shot. He and his teammates were cross-trained in just about everything. He might be a breacher by specialty, but he was no slouch in hitting a target.
A molded area around the rooftop gave him perfect cover. The corners had embellished see-through slats, designed to funnel water from run off into the gutters, and now flat on his stomach, he had a secure tight line of sight of the area. He could make a shot through one of the small openings and remain concealed and covered from return fire.
This is what he had trained for. What he excelled at. And he loved doing his job. They were ghosts in the night—concealment, cover, taking the shot, making the kill, saving the hostage, capturing the HVT, then egress.
His refusal to let Chry comfort him, give him something softer, more emotionally complex, was a conscious decision, especially now that she was their liaison. Without Chry, he feared he might feel nothing at all. But she couldn’t become a confidant.
A short, sharp breath left him, sudden, unexpected, a sign of pain. His hand went back to the middle of his chest, and he pressed again, easing away the ache, and when it was gone, he let it all go.