Heated Pursuit (Alpha Security #1)(63)
Rafe’s mouth opened to say something—anything to make her understand. Except he didn’t get it himself. Before he could conjure the right words to form some kind of an explanation, the hut door slammed open.
Rafe spun around, his gun coming up on reflex. Instead of the enemy charging into the room, one of the village children pointed toward the eastern line of the rain forest and spoke in rapid-fire Miskito.
Men. Strangers.
Rafe rechecked the barrel of the Glock and placed it in Penny’s hands before picking up the AK-47 for himself. “Stay here.”
Penny stepped into his path. “Are you insane? What if it’s Diego’s men? They’ll shoot you on sight!”
“It’s not Fuentes’s men, but that doesn’t mean I want you anywhere near this right now.” He grasped her arms in a gentle grip and maneuvered her to the side. “Stay,” he ordered over his shoulder right before he stepped outside.
It took an entire ten f*cking seconds before Penny followed him onto the porch with the Glock still tucked in her hand. He whirled on her, not bothering to dampen his agitation. “Damn it, Red. What the hell did I tell you?”
“You told me to stay, but I never went to obedience school, so I still get those commands all confused.” Her narrowed eyes dared him to say something.
Rafe’s chest rumbled with his growl. She drove him f*cking crazy. Short of throwing her over his shoulder and tying her to the damn bed, there was no way to keep her out of this.
Seven figures approached the village, all with badass assault rifles propped on their shoulders and looking like they’d stepped out of the cargo hold of a Boeing. If it weren’t for the sight of their familiar ugly mugs, Rafe would’ve started praying for a f*cking Hail Mary.
“Hey there, darlin’.” Logan reached them first and instantly flashed Penny his signature smile. “Bet you missed the hell out of us, huh? Must’ve really sucked only having Ortega to talk to.”
“I’m a f*cking exceptional conversationalist,” Rafe said dryly.
Logan scoffed. “Try that on someone who hasn’t been crammed in a three-by-three foxhole with you for thirty-six hours. I had to talk to the f*cking grubs to keep my sanity.”
Penny laughed, giving Logan a quick hug before moving on to Trey and from there, each of the guys. Even Stone accepted her show of affection before he cut his gaze to him. “You know, when I named all the ways this op could go wrong, I didn’t mean that you should go and f*cking aim for every single one of them.”
Rafe shrugged off the comment and diverted his gaze to the three men who didn’t belong to his team. Next to him, Penny’s gaze also shifted.
“No. Freaking. Way.” With a laugh, she flew down the steps and toward the man with the shaved head hovering just off the shack’s bottom steps. The warmth in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around the stranger turned Rafe’s blood to ice.
*
The bonfire flames reached high into the sky, lighting the night with a warm, golden glow, and yet Rafe had never felt so damn cold. No expectations, Penny had said. He should be jumping for joy that he could go on with his life as he’d always meant—sans complications. But the more he thought about it, the more pissed he got—at himself, at Penny, and at the jackass across the bonfire who kept whispering things in her ear.
Vincent Fucking Franklin. The mentor. The friend. One look at the former SEAL and the image Rafe had of a middle-aged man with a potbelly and acne pits disintegrated. Franklin and his cronies, Ryker and Braggs, were easily two hundred pounds of solid muscle and bad attitude.
Penny sat tucked between Franklin and his men while Rafe’s gut twisted in f*cking knots with each smile she gifted the Navy SEAL. That smile could bring world peace—and he wished like hell it was being aimed at him.
He’d been dumb-shit stupid for thinking one night—or even a long string of them—would ever get Penny out of his system, or that her presence wouldn’t affect him on some vital level. She was an extension of him, permanent right down to his most basic parts. But unlike with an arm or leg, there was no way to alter his way of life to make her absence easier.
It f*cking hurt, and he deserved every last ounce of that f*cking misery.
“You stare at the poor f*ck any harder and his dick’s going to turn to ice and fall the f*ck off.” Trey leaned back, relaxed and totally at ease. And f*cking smirking. “And before you go all jealous lover and shit, you should probably know that he’s the reason we were able to find your sorry ass.”
Logan dropped himself onto a tree stump. “Actually, because of him and his guys, we were able to find Fuentes’s little hidey-hole. But we found your sorry ass by following the trail of body bread crumbs that you left littering the jungle floor. Good job, by the way. We probably stumbled onto the compound a day and a half after you made your mark, and the place was still in an uproar.”
“I had a little help,” Rafe mumbled.
They’d hashed through everything over an hour ago. Back in San Pedro Sula, Alpha and Franklin’s guys had nearly come to blows before realizing they were searching for the same people. And the almighty Vince and his subhuman-level contacts had pinpointed the location of Fuentes’s compound in less than forty-eight f*cking hours—a fact that was still making Charlie chew nails stateside.
But one thing no one knew about was Fuentes’s f*cking nephew. And that was because it wasn’t in the intel that had been handed over by the DEA when Alpha had accepted the operation. It was a pretty big-ass piece of information to leave out accidentally. Now the question posed was where Fuentes’s mole stood in the DEA food chain. And they’d be one step closer to figuring that out when they reached the Mocoron base.