Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan Page 0,8

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.

He’d