treated Johnnie to a look of disgust. “Clean yourself up.”
Johnnie crawled to his feet and grabbed for the dirty kitchen towel hanging over the faucet. “You broke my nose.”
Hurting Johnnie felt good. Too good. Zach cursed his lack of control. He’d finally wrestled the animal part of him into submission only to find his hold weak.
Sela picked that moment to make a mad dash for the door. The woman had a lousy sense of timing.
She ducked low and tried to barrel past him. She might have made it, too, except he was ready. He knew she was a born fighter. He’d studied her, followed her and watched her day after day for weeks. The person who ordered her kidnapping might underestimate her survival instinct. Zach didn’t plan to make that mistake.
He snatched her around her slim waist and lifted her into the air, pressing her back against the full length of his body with as gentle a touch as possible. “Whoa, you’re not going anywhere.”
“Let me go.” Labored breathing strained her voice.
When he squeezed her midsection, she let out a shocked yelp of distress. He turned her around so their noses almost touched. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She pushed against him, her small fists knocking against his chest in a futile attempt to break free. “Don’t touch me.”
Zach captured her hands in his and pulled her body tight against him. Each slope and contour of her fit him like a perfect puzzle piece.
“Settle down,” he said.
She ignored him. She grunted and shoved at him.
“Are you hurt?” He conducted a visual tour, looking for signs of obvious injury.
“What do you care?” Her eyes promised mutiny.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Zach scowled at Johnnie where he leaned over the nearby sink, and once again debated killing him. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Zach could not get off his game. Not yet. There would be time to talk and figure out why Johnnie picked today and who hired him, but this wasn’t it. Reacting to her distress would distract him and kill them both.
“You touch her, Johnnie, you die. You understand me?”
“Well, well, well.” Johnnie threw the stained towel in the sink. “Big man thinks he owns the woman.”
Adrenaline pumped through Zach. His only thought was to protect Sela. That was his job. Didn’t matter if it was a formal operation or a self-imposed assignment. He’d taken on that role the second he started watching her.
The blow came out of nowhere.
One minute Johnnie skulked around, head down and shoulders slumped with a general air of defeat. The next he snarled like a wild animal. He aimed his full body weight for Zach’s stomach. Anticipating the hit, Zach moved to the side at the last minute and pushed Sela out of the fray.
Johnnie didn’t stop. He launched a second strike. This one with fists. Zach blocked a wild punch and sent Johnnie spinning into the couch. Zach outweighed his attacker by a good thirty pounds and he had been trained to fight. Trained by the best to kill.
A kick straight to the stomach and the fight ended with Johnnie rolling on the floor, holding his bruised ribs. In those precious final minutes of battle Zach feared he had gone over the edge, that his tenuous hold on his control had finally snapped, speeding him across that imaginary line between good and evil.
Thinking about Johnnie hurting Sela torched Zach’s insides. He barely knew her, but that didn’t matter. There were some things a man didn’t do. Smacking a woman around was at the dead top of the list.
Zach inhaled long and deep, hoping to calm the madness brewing inside of him. When his breathing returned to normal he tipped his head back against the wall and looked around the room.
Sela was gone.
“CARE TO TELL ME what that was about?” Luke Hathaway stood staring at the wall of computer monitors in the Recovery Project’s warehouse headquarters. With one hand balanced against the console, he hovered. He was good at hovering.
Ever since Recovery had lost its government funding and disbanded as a quasi-official agency, it operated even deeper undercover. When Rod Lehman had disappeared—the man who’d handpicked the Recovery members and set the group’s mission—Luke had stepped up to serve as de facto leader.
A serious injury to his shoulder made him a possible vulnerability to his fellow agents in the field. Not that he regretted the move that took away partial use of his arm since it happened while saving his wife, Claire, the love of his life and the person who now bankrolled the Recovery Project.
But the change in financing meant no more fancy downtown Washington, D.C., offices with the fake cover of an antiques salvage operation. No more formal law-enforcement assistance. No more protection if they stepped too close to the line. That was all long gone. Now they had a nondescript beige warehouse by the southwest waterfront. It didn’t look like much but the technology inside rivaled that of any government intelligence agency thanks to Adam’s technical expertise.
Being in command, taking the lead but often staying behind when the bullets started flying, let Luke play a major role without his unwanted disability causing a problem for his team. It also allowed him to focus and make sure the group’s original mission never changed. They specialized in finding missing people, those who were taken against their will and those who disappeared on purpose. Locating Rod, now presumed dead, was their main job and a constant source of frustration. They were experts, could find almost anyone, and they couldn’t find this one man who meant so much.
Since they’d just come off a series of cases uncovering corruption in the Witness Security Program— WitSec—that left several of the program participants dead in a cash-for-information scheme by the very officials charged with protecting them, the Recovery agents were all exhausted. They were supposed to be taking a short break to regroup and figure out what role Trevor Walters, the very rich, very connected and very dirty owner of Orion Industries, played in the WitSec murders. And if he had a partner. Which meant Adam and Zach shouldn’t be handling an operation, and certainly shouldn’t being doing so without Luke’s involvement.
The only reason Luke knew to get there this morning was his emergency alarm went off when the building’s tracking devices started humming. That meant either Adam was working instead of sleeping with his new girlfriend Maddie in the loft above the team’s workspace or someone had broken in. Either way, Luke had to move. He left his house in the capable hands of fellow team member Caleb Mattern, who was also in charge of watching over Claire and Caleb’s new wife, Avery. They were two women determined to help even if it meant danger, which made protecting them an even bigger challenge. But Caleb was up to the task.
Skipping his usual morning coffee and a few extra hours in bed with his pregnant wife made Luke more than a little frustrated. Things would only get worse in a few minutes when the caffeine headache kicked in.
“I’ll ask again. This obviously isn’t a drill since I didn’t schedule one, so what is Zach doing?” This time Luke loomed behind Adam, making sure he couldn’t move his chair without slamming into either the desk in front of him or Luke behind him.
“You
