Fatal Courage: Shadow Force International, Book 3 (Shadow Force International Romantic Suspense Series) (15 page)

Ruby jetted around the barricade of boxes and barrels and ran up to Jax’s side.

Looking down, her guts twisted in a knot and her knees gave out.

T
HE
M
AN
L
AY
face down on the floor, his body wrapped in a blood-soaked car coat. His head was hid underneath a Cubs baseball cap, and his wrists were bound with twine.

His flashlight beam showed Jax the dead man at his feet wasn’t Caucasian.

Not Elliot.

Good thing he’d put his weapon away already because Ruby’s knees buckled and Jax had to grab her to keep her from going down.

The feel of her body against him ignited rioting all over his. “It’s not him,” he said, holding her close and rubbing a hand over her back in comforting circles. “It’s not Elliot.”

She clung to him, hands clenching his shirt, her jaw working into his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

The guy had a good deal of blood on him, but he was definitely too dark-skinned to be Elliot, who was as pale as the Moroccan sand. “Yeah, I’m sure. This guy’s black or Hispanic or a mix. I need to turn him over and get a better look.”

Ruby swallowed hard and broke the embrace. “This is a crime scene. I should call it in and we should, you know, back away and not disturb anything. We may have already destroyed evidence.”

Jax turned his flashlight back toward the man’s body. “There’s a lot of wounds. A lot of blood. He was tortured before he bled out.”

Ignoring Ruby’s protest, he bent down next to the body, reached in to check for a pulse, even though he knew damn well there wouldn’t be one.

“Anything?” she said so quietly he almost didn’t hear her over the storm.

Jax found the guy’s carotid and let his fingertips linger for a moment. Dropped his hand and shook his head. “Nothing. Body’s cool to the touch. He hasn’t been dead long, but he’s definitely dead.”

Behind him she swore. “Is it Augustus Nelson?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Jax grabbed the man’s shoulder and rolled him over enough to see the face while Ruby shined her flashlight on him.

As the cap fell off, Jax saw there wasn’t much discernible about the face. Someone had beaten the guy to a pulp. Both eyes were swollen to the size of golf balls, the cheekbones were caved in, and the jaw appeared broken.

Definitely tortured.

“Holy Father Christopher,” Ruby mumbled. “He looks like he got hit by a tank.”

“His overall body proportions seem correct for Nelson, but I can’t be sure.”

“It’s him,” she said, spotlighting a patch of skin on the side of the neck.

Jax looked closer and saw nothing but dried blood covering the spot she was focused on. Blood had run from the man’s ear and temple, down the side of his face and neck. “How do you know?”

“There.” She leaned over his back and pointed to a place slightly covered by the coat’s collar. “See that? The edge of the cross tattoo on his neck. I recognize the curlicues. They have spikes on the ends.”

Drawing the collar back, Jax saw what she was pointing at. “What the hell did you do, Elliot?” he said to no one in particular.

Outside, the wind changed direction, rain suddenly driving in a broken window to their right.

“You really think Elliot did this?” Ruby said over the noise.

“Torture someone enough to kill him? No.” This wasn’t Hayden’s style. He was a CIA agent, and regardless of Ruby’s beliefs, he was trained to put a bullet in someone, but this was something else. “I think someone’s messing with us. You’re sure that was Hayden on the tape leaving with Nelson?”

“Pretty sure. I couldn’t see his face because of the angle of the camera, but it looked like his gait, his general body proportions. Plus, he was wearing the cap from my go-bag.”

“He has to be working with someone.”

Ruby bent down beside him. “Someone who wanted to shut up Nelson.”

Jax checked the pockets of the coat, Nelson’s jean pockets. Empty. “First, they wanted information. That’s why they tortured him.”

“Or maybe it was personal,” Ruby mused. “Like you said it might have been with me.”

The only person associated with both Ruby and Nelson who would be extracting some kind of personal revenge had to be Elliot, didn’t it?

But this wasn’t him. None of it. He was highly intelligent and sneaky as hell, but not brutally violent. And he loved Ruby, Jax was sure. Hurting her would be the last thing Elliot Hayden would ever do.

Unless he’d had a mental breakdown. Prison, even country club prison, could make a person lose their shit.

Ruby flinched as a bright bolt of lightning cracked nearby. “This storm is getting serious.”

“Let’s take some pictures for reference and we’ll go downstairs and call the local cops.”

She stood and brought out her phone. “That will tie us up for awhile. We don’t have time for the cops.”

Jax held the body so she could take pictures of the face, then he allowed it to return to its original position, facedown. “We’ll call it in anonymously. My cell is a secure line.”

“Mine too. I still don’t like using our cells.”

“Paranoid, much?”

“You would be, too, if you knew the shit the CIA and NSA do.”

He conceded with a nod. “I’ll call Emit. He’ll take care of it.”

Thunder boomed so hard, it shook the building’s walls. Both of them flinched this time. The wind roared around the windows. “Let’s get downstairs,” Jax said, taking her by the elbow.

She was still playing with her phone. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t have service.”

Jax stopped at the top of the stairs, checked his phone, saw he had no connection either. “Must be the storm. It’s knocked out transmissions or a tower is down.”

Ruby glanced back. “So now what?”

“We ride the storm out and head to town when it’s over. We’ll either find service or a pay phone.”

The creaky stairs were drowned out by a rapid-fire
pingpingping
against the metal walls and roof. “Is that hail?” Jax called over the noise.

“Must be,” Ruby yelled back as she made it to the first floor. “It better not damage my rental!”

If he’d had Wi-Fi, he could have checked his weather app. Instead, he followed Ruby as she danced around the debris in the middle of the floor to the window above the desk.

“Oh, man,” he heard her say. The window didn’t allow much of a view, the hail, wind, and sheeting rain obscuring the parking lot.

She turned to him, her face concerned. “How safe do you think we are in here?”

Safe? In this old building? The way it was creaking didn’t exactly scream stable. “Why?”

Ruby opened her mouth to answer but nothing came out as the sound of a long, wailing siren pierced the chaos of the storm.

She raised a finger and cocked her head toward the window. “That,” she said.

Jax listened closer, heard the wailing continue, reminding him of the air raid sirens he’d heard a time or two in combat. He wasn’t from the Midwest, but he had a sneaking suspicion he knew what that was. “Shit on a stick, please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“Yep.” Ruby squinted out the window, looking up. “That, my friend, is a tornado siren.”

Chapter Ten

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R
UBY
D
IDN’T
M
OVE
away when Jax stepped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. She did squeal a little when he lifted her off the ground and spun her away from the window.

God help her. The wind was roaring and the hail was smacking the roof and, hopefully, Jax didn’t hear her whimper of fear.

She’d faced terrorists head on. Gang bangers and some pretty righteously mean bastards as well. Hell, she’d been underground in a tunnel when it had blown up.

Not much scared her like hearing a tornado siren.

Growing up in this part of the country, sirens were a part of every summer. For two weeks every July, she and her siblings would spend time on their grandparents’ farm near Galena. They’d help their grandpa with his prize garden, swing on the porch swing in the evenings, watching fireflies. There was a stream nearby where they went swimming and sometimes caught fish.

Ruby always threw hers back.

It was an idyllic two weeks except for the storms that always rolled through.

The tornado that had killed her grandfather had come at dusk, the sun slipping below the horizon and disguising the fast moving clouds. They’d heard the siren go off in the nearest town, five miles away, the air so still on the front porch, Ruby’s grandfather had waved it off. The crops and garden were dry from lack of rain, and Grandpa McKellen had sniffed the air. “Probably pass us right on by,” he’d said. “Just you watch.”

By the time their grandmother had sent the kids into the cellar, sheer winds generated by the approaching tornado had split the willow tree in two. One massive side of the tree fell into the house. Ruby’s grandfather, sitting at the kitchen table, had died instantly.

Jax hustled her across the floor to the back of the building where the machines sat forgotten and tucked her between a grain bin and the back wall. Squeezing his body in with her, he drew her down into a squat.

She couldn’t see anything, his massive body blocking out what little light there was as he hovered slightly over her, prepared to protect her from the storm.

The storm inside her was equally as strong, her heart and mind in turmoil, her body eager to curl up to Jax’s solidness and hold on for dear life.

The simple act of breathing became a challenge, the air in the room seeming to be sucked out by a giant vacuum. White noise roared in her ears; the ground under her feet trembled.

Her hands found Jax of their own volition, grabbing onto his shirt, his arms, wrapping around his chest. The smell of his soap and his sweat cut through the other smells. The weight of one of his hands on the back of her neck brought her head to his chest. Over the awful noises of the storm and her own mental chaos, she thought she heard his heartbeat, steady and strong like the rest of him.

The timing was wrong, the train wreck of her career, her life, continuing to lurch further off the tracks. Yet, something made her fingers snake up his chest, his neck, then touch his firm jaw. She felt more than heard him grunt, sensed his face turning down to look at her.

The feel of his cheeks, his lips under her fingers made her even bolder. She wanted him so much in that moment—this protector, this incredible man who made her toes curl and her blood run hot—that she stopped thinking about her job, her loyalties to the CIA and Elliot, to her own insecurities about relationships. Even to her fear of tornadoes.

She had nowhere else to be in that moment, no deadlines, no undercover op. The storm raged around them, uncontrollable and wild, and in that moment, she wanted to be like the storm. Wanted to let go of her fears and the maelstrom of her life and be wild and reckless.

Her fingers found their way into his hair, tickled his earlobes, traced a rivulet of water running down the back of his neck.

She felt him shiver under the stroke of her hand.

And then the hand holding the back of her neck drew her closer. In the dark, she felt the soft glide of his lips against hers, the taste of his tongue as she sought it with her own.

Muscles rippled under her hands as she brought her fingers to this shoulders, dragging him closer until their chests bumped. His tongue swept into her mouth, deepening the kiss.

The air she couldn’t find before now flooded her lungs as she gasped at the fresh sensations surging through her veins, firing up her blood. She’d been so lonely since Marrakech. So
alone
.

Ruby knew how the poor, old building felt, all alone, no longer necessary. She’d felt that way since Marrakech.

People came and went in her life. No big deal. It was the life of an operative. Friends, family, co-workers, most of them never knew why she kept her distance. Why she never looked back.

Being on her own had never bothered her. She liked being independent, not tied down to a desk job or a steady relationship. Elliot had been her one long-term alliance—a partner she had trusted with her life, her very soul.

And then Jaxon Sloan had come along and changed everything.

Clinging to him in the midst of a tornado, she didn’t want to let go. Couldn’t stand the thought of being alone. She’d never given her heart to anyone, yet somehow, on the worst mission of her life, he’d slipped under her skin, gotten into her blood, her very atoms.

The howling around them faded into the background as his hands found their way under her shirt, up to her bra. He thumbed her nipples through the soft lace and Ruby panted into his mouth, shifting her weight back on her knees so she could fumble with his belt buckle.

He broke the kiss, caught her hand and drew it away. She felt the vibration of his chest as though he’d said something, but she couldn’t hear him above the roar in her ears.