Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(20)



“Why do you want to know?” Steady asked, a muscle in his jaw twitching a warning.

She didn’t heed it. “Call me intrigued,” she told him.

“Sí? Well, call us classified.”

Uh-huh. Okay. So if she wasn’t mistaken—and she very much doubted she was—these guys were other. And judging by the shuttered looks they were giving her, she figured she knew just what that other was.

Black Ops…

Black as in not even the Pentagon controlled them. Black as in the kind of men who operated outside, beneath, and beyond the auspices of international law and order. Black as in folks for whom the phrase deny all knowledge of your existence was coined, and then there was its twin, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.

She swallowed. “Never mind.” Because if there was one thing she knew about shadow operators, it was that the less she knew, the better.

Dan sent her a smile she assumed was supposed to be comforting, but a fat lot of good it did her. There was nothing, absolutely nothing anyone could do to comfort her right now…Buck up and keep chicky! She could almost hear her father’s voice in her ear, and she immediately squared her shoulders.

“Once Ozzie is stable”—Steady continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. He was stuffing gear into a black backpack with quick, efficient movements—“he’ll be transferred from the local emergency facility to the hospital ship accompanying the carrier group. He’ll undergo surgery there…which is the first point in our favor because I don’t trust these Malaysian sawbones to do what it’ll take to save his leg.”

“Good,” Dan grunted, watching Steady load his pack. Why was he equipping himself? Was the guy planning on a flippin’ hike or something? “And I’m sorry you can’t be there with him. I know you wanna keep an eye on the medical side of things.”

Steady shook his head, the muscles in his broad shoulders flexing. “It is what it is. Besides, right now we have other things to take care of.”

“Like finding Abby.”

“Exactly,” Steady confirmed. “Which brings me to the second point in our favor. That SEAL team tasked with securing the last of the…um…uh”—he snapped a veiled glance in her direction—“you know whats from the ocean floor is traveling with the carrier group.”

Something was on the ocean floor? Despite the gravity of her current situation, Penni’s imagination took flight with the possibilities. A wrecked nuclear submarine, perhaps? Or sunken biological weapons from Syria? Some of the material taken from the al-Assad regime had gone missing from a shipment and—

“They just finished their mission, which means they’re gearing up to head our way as we speak,” Steady continued. “With flight time and transfer time, I’d say their ETA is approximately”—he glanced at the big black watch on his wrist—“oh-seven-hundred. HQ says you worked beside these men back in the day? That you were pretty good friends with their lieutenant, some guy nicknamed ‘The Lion’?”

A smile spread across Dan’s face. She tried not to think about the fact that he’d worn that exact same expression as he loomed over her in bed. “Leo Anderson.” Dan dipped his chin. “He’s good. All of his men are good. We’ll be lucky to have ’em.”

“Bueno. And hopefully, by the time they get here, we’ll have located Abby, scouted the area she’s being held in, and have a plan in place for her extraction, eh?”

Which reminded Penni… “Um…guys? I’m not sure how easy that’ll be.” She pointed a finger at the iPad’s screen.

“What do you mean?” Dan’s brow puckered.

“According to this, Abby’s tracking devices have been scattered all over the city.”

Steady stopped loading the backpack to pin her with a hard look. Black Ops… How could she have missed it? It was written all over him. Dan too, for that matter.

Oh, yes indeedie! Just my luck. I go looking for human connection and wind up seducing one of them! For shit’s sake! Because Black Ops and human connection might as well be antonyms in the wide, wide world of—

Whoa. Okay. So it was difficult not to flinch when Steady stalked toward her. And she did flinch, just a little, when he motioned for her to hand over the iPad with a hard flick of his fingers. The guy’s expression was the facial equivalent of a grenade with a loose pin.

Passing him the device, she rubbed the little bump on her nose—it was a nervous tic that, most days, she tried to contain. But this was not most days. Evidenced by the fact that Steady cursed like a convict as he studied the iPad’s screen. Then he tilted his head from side to side, cracking the vertebrae in his neck, before impatiently handing it back to her. Pulling his iPhone from his pocket, he thumbed it alive. His expression was unreadable as he stepped over to Dan, gesturing at the screen. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Roger that.” Dan nodded. “Maybe we’re lucky.”

“Or maybe we’re good.”

Huh? Lucky? Good? Not necessarily the adjectives she’d use to describe this god-awful situation. But before she could ask what the flippin’ hell they were talking about, Steady turned to her. “You’re right. Her clothes are scattered to the four winds. So whoever took her knew about the transmitters. I thought that information was classified.”

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