Tempted & Taken (Men of Haven #4)(101)

“Sweetheart, after we get through the rest of this day, you can learn how to do anything you want to, so long as you don’t do any of it without me next to you. Not until I can get over the last seven hours.”

For a second, she was quiet. When she spoke again her voice was soft with need to match his own. “I miss you, too.”

Knox sighed and fisted the hair on top of his head, elbows braced on the desk in front of him. “I couldn’t see anything.” The words came from the very pit of his soul. A confession and a plea for her to understand. “It took ninety-seven seconds. Over a minute and a half when the bits and pieces I heard wouldn’t form a visual in my head, and you were in the thick of it. Without me.”

“You’re where you’re supposed to be. Doing what you’re good at.”

Funny. Ever since he could remember, he’d had a driving curiosity to poke and prod at things. To break them apart and see how they worked. The habit had driven him into computers and he’d been devoted ever since. The code and the challenge of sneaking into places he shouldn’t be had been his comfort. His way to escape and flip a mental bird to the people who’d been all too effective at keeping him out of their life. Now that he had Darya, he didn’t need the solace. Didn’t need to prove anything. “The only thing that matters anymore is taking care of you.”

Zeke smacked him on the shoulder and pointed at Knox’s headset on the desk in front of him.

Knox snatched it up, but directed his comment to Darya. “You got your earpiece on?”

“I’m putting it on now.”

“Good. Remember the plan. And no more covert shit with you in the middle and me not beside you for as long as I’m breathing.”

Her light laughter was the last thing he heard before Sergei’s voice gut through their link. “Eleven inside including Ruslan. They sent more for surveillance than we thought.”

Axel’s low voice slid through the link. “Nice. You came in five minutes under.”

“I’ll bet that also means we’ve got a van to dispose of when this is all over,” Beckett added.

Sergei’s breath was slightly elevated, but his accent was twice as thick and there was grim satisfaction in his tone when he answered. “You would be correct.”

“How much time do you need to head up?” Danny said.

“My men are gearing up now,” Sergei answered. “Take your team up the stairwell and be ready.”

“We’ll need Gia’s trigger to even out the eleven,” Beckett said. “Gia, you good with that?”

Before Gia could answer Knox cut in. “Gia covers Darya. I’m in.”

“Knox, we need you on the controls,” Axel said. “Besides, not a one of us are going in without vests. I know damned good and well you don’t have one.”

“Odds of anyone aiming at anything other than our heads are slim and a vest’s not gonna help me there. And once we activate at the entrance, there’s nothing Zeke can’t handle here. He’ll be prepped, but Darya’s not stepping a foot in that door without full cover. If we need another gunner it’s me.”

Silence crackled through the line, though there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Axel, Danny and Beckett were all scrambling for one decent reason to keep his ass in his chair.

“Glad we got that straight,” Knox said before any of them could come up with anything. “Danny, I’ll watch the feeds and meet the rest of you in the stairwell.”

To his credit, Zeke waited all of ten seconds from the time Knox muted his mic before he spoke. “You sure you want to do this? If something backfires in there, they may need you behind this keyboard more than in the line of fire.”

Under normal circumstances he’d agree, but Ruslan had bought and paid for the whole floor. No matter what went down in the next half hour, no innocent bystanders were going to be close enough to fire off any 911 calls. “I walked away from my woman seven hours ago and have sat in this chair ever since. I did it because this was the place I could do her the most good and it almost killed me. But right now, if it were Gabe walking into a room with guns firing off in all directions and we needed another trigger to even the score, where would you be?”

Zeke held his gaze and nodded. “Point taken.”

In the garage camera feed, the service van’s side door slid open and Sergei’s men piled out, all but Sergei and his two best shooters heading to join Danny, Axel and Ivan already positioned in the stairwell. Beckett, Sergei and his men surrounded Darya and Gia, acting the part of Ruslan’s guards.

Knox stood, switched his headset out for a mobile unit and checked his gun. “I’m up. All you have to do is keep a sharp eye on the guards outside the door and clue us in before they can signal any alarms inside.”

“Yeah, that and make sure no one ends up dead.” Zeke slid into Knox’s vacated chair behind the desk and cracked his knuckles. “Do me a favor. Save me some overtime and avoid the bullets, all right?”

“Says the guy who went into a break-in for his own woman without a gun and came out with a trophy wound. At least I’m armed.”

He reached the stairwell landing on Ruslan’s floor, Danny, Axel, Ivan and Sergei’s men already in place. Despite their slightly rumpled appearance and a few stray blood splotches on one of the men’s shirts, the three Russians all sported bland expressions. The sort that said they were either so damned used to this line of work it didn’t faze them anymore, or were doing their best to hide how much they hated the idea of working with a mixed crew.