Armed Response Read online

  Jace grinned. “I can handle a few bruises.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to make a dash for it?” Saul asked, enthusiasm fairly radiating from him. “I’m fast.”

  Jace shook his head. “No, that’s exactly what he’s expecting. For you or Lily to run, to try to use your speed. And you’re too big for me to use in this plan.”

  Saul grimaced. “Are you sure she can handle her end of this?”

  Jace shook his head at the same time Lillian’s eyes narrowed. Saul might be new, but he would learn fast not to underestimate Lillian if he wanted to stay part of this team. “Don’t worry. I’ll do my part.”

  It was a pretty damn big part.

  Jace turned to Philip. “You’ve got to sell it, to get us more time. Derek will come after you just to teach you a lesson.”

  Philip didn’t look thrilled, but then again, Jace wasn’t sure he ever did.

  “I can handle a few bruises,” Philip echoed.

  Jace nodded at the other team members. They weren’t excited about being left out of most of the action, but they understood the advantage of his plan. Of keeping Derek off balance as long as possible.

  “Remember.” Lillian turned to him. “Rules are that you can only take five more steps after you’re hit. Make them count.”

  They all stood and made their way closer to the twenty-yard square area Derek was guarding. There was some cover of trees and boulders, but not a lot. Derek definitely had the tactical advantage.

  Jace and Lillian separated from the rest of the team. Philip and Saul would be drawing Derek’s attention—hopefully—from the other end of the field.

  “If Saul gets all gung-ho and takes off, then gets hit, this isn’t going to work,” Lillian whispered. “I’m not sure it’s going to work even if he doesn’t.”

  Jace couldn’t help himself—he bent down and kissed her, fast and hard. “If there’s anyone I would trust to get me out of a situation when I’m wounded, it’s you.”

  “You’re nuts, Eakin.” She shook her head. “Let’s try this crazy plan.”

  They waited for the signal. It came just moments later.

  “Because we have to stick together, Poniard, don’t you dare leave me here to get shot.” Philip’s words were soft, like they weren’t meant to be heard. Jace and Lillian could barely make them out.

  But that meant Derek could, too.

  Jace didn’t wait. He scooped up Lillian—she rolled herself into as tight a ball as possible—and he ran. He only had to make it halfway before he got shot. Far enough that his back would be to Derek, and the team leader wouldn’t see the hidden person Jace had curled in his arms. Derek would be expecting Lily to try to run her own route and make it through. Wouldn’t expect her to agree to be carried.

  “Damn it, Saul, wait!” Philip again, hopefully going from the script, and not saying it because Saul really had taken off.

  It bought Jace the few extra seconds he needed. He kept Lillian tucked high against his chest as he felt the first paintball hit his back. Three more followed rapidly.

  Damn, those did hurt.

  This whole plan was relying on the fact that Derek wouldn’t stay and watch Jace “fall” onto the boulder in front of him. He had too much else he had to keep track of. Jace got his five more steps in, then set Lillian on the ground. She immediately began sprinting toward the finish line.

  Whooshes of air blew as more shots were fired from the paintball gun. But not at Lillian.

  Philip squeaked, “Ow, damn it.” He took his five steps closer to the finish line, then fell.

  Jace turned to watch and saw the exact moment Derek realized he’d been played. He turned and aimed his gun at Lillian, but she was already crossing the line.

  Derek smiled and looked down at his watch. “Okay, Muir. You’ve got two minutes to get them both across if you want to claim your victory.”

  Lillian sprinted back to Philip first. She sat him up and then swung his arm over her shoulder, dragging him across to the safe area.

  She stopped to take a breath, looking Jace in the eye. He weighed significantly more than Philip did.

  But Jace had no doubt she could do it—that she would get him over to that safe zone. Especially now, with the entire team looking on.

  She jogged back to him and got down to business. The boulder helped, putting Jace more upright. But she would still have to fireman-carry him. There was no way she could drag him like she had done with Philip.

  He could hear the cheers of their teammates as she pulled his torso around her shoulders and slipped her hand through his legs and wrapped her arm around his knees. A huge groan came out of her small body as her legs straightened and she took his whole weight, lifting him off the ground.

  She couldn’t walk straight, and she might not have been able to walk for long—especially after the grueling workout they’d already gone through on the course—but Lillian got them both over the finish line just as the time was running out.

  Jace immediately dropped his leg to the ground and took his weight as the rest of the team ran over, hooting and hollering. Even Philip was grinning. Lillian dropped back against a tree to get her breath. Everyone was slapping both of them on the back until Derek came over and told them to complete the rest of the course.

  “Good job, you two,” he told them as they walked to the next section. “Completely had me fooled. Some partnerships are just meant to be.”

  Jace didn’t say anything. He’d once thought that exact same thing also.

  He’d been wrong.

  Chapter Six

  Everything seemed to take a turn for the better after the Gauntlet in terms of team building. The paintball win had given them all the boost they’d needed and the confidence that they could work together successfully. Lillian was glad to see it.

  What she wasn’t quite so glad about was that Jace seemed to be within arm’s reach every time she turned around for the next five days.

  All the damn time.

  Admittedly, a lot of it was the training they were doing as a team. More obstacle courses. The shooting range. The different scenarios within the multimillion-dollar simulator on the outskirts of the Omega Sector campus.

  It came as no surprise to her that Jace fit right into the team as if he’d been there all along. He’d always been charming and affable even back when they were teenagers. The polar opposite of his bastard brother. Tension coursed through her body at the thought of Daryl, so Lillian pushed him from her mind. She’d had twelve years of practice doing that.

  But charm meant nothing to a SWAT team without the skills to back it up. Jace had those in spades, too, and they’d been especially evident when he’d proven himself with the Gauntlet plan. His sharpshooting abilities impressed even Ashton Fitzgerald, the team’s sharpshooter. Jace’s close-quarters fighting skills she already personally knew about. He also had a specialty in explosive devices.

  When Ashton, team clown, asked Jace if he would go steady with him, Lillian knew Jace had won over the team.

  Saul and Philip weren’t too happy about Jace’s instant inclusion into the inner circle, when they’d both been fighting so hard for that same acceptance. But there was just an innate authority with Jace that neither Saul nor Philip had. Nobody said anything about it, but they all knew it.

  The parts of Jace that had drawn her when they were both teenagers were even more prevalent now. His strength. His focus. His dedication.

  Add that to the fact that he was opening a ranch where he would raise animals that would help soldiers with PTSD? How was she supposed to process that?

  She wanted distance from him but couldn’t get it. There literally was no time. The LESS Summit was coming up in just days and they would all need to function seamlessly as a team by then.

  They trained day and night, since the summit would require th
em in both daylight and nighttime hours. Sometimes that meant little sleep or crashing on whatever couch or floor was available in the team break room.

  Jace definitely wasn’t a diva. Just like everyone else, when they had a break in the middle of a twenty-four-hour training session, he found a spot, curled his head back and promptly fell asleep.

  But damn it, that had ended up being right next to her every single time.

  Just like how every time they were at the practice range he ended up next to her.

  And every time they were in the SWAT van traveling somewhere, it was his leg pressed up against hers.

  When they ate. When they did their ten-mile runs.

  Always there. Always next to her.

  He never did anything to make any sort of big deal out of it, hadn’t kissed her again or made any moves on her since that brief kiss at the Gauntlet. But he didn’t have to. Lillian was aware of him in a way she hadn’t been aware of someone...for twelve years.

  And it felt good. In the scariest way possible.

  Her body and mind trusted Jace in a way she hadn’t been able to trust another man in twelve years...actually her whole life. She wasn’t well versed in psychology—damn, she missed Grace Parker—but Lillian knew enough about her own mind to know that the passion between the two of them a dozen years ago was the only untainted memory of sex that she had.

  Sometimes she still thought about those nights they’d had together. How uninhibited and all-encompassing her feelings had been. They’d had the entire world and forever in their future. No grasp at all of how quickly life could change.

  She and Jace had been friends for a long time before they were lovers, since Jace was older than her and refused to sleep with her until she turned eighteen. Then they’d only had about a month after her eighteenth birthday before...

  Before he left for the army. Before everything in her world crumbled. Lillian felt her body turn cold even now.

  Jace seemed to have forgiven her for leaving him—God, the thought still made her want to vomit—for Daryl.

  It was good that he’d forgiven her, without even having one iota of understanding about the true circumstances.

  Jace was a good man. He’d been a good man then, and he was still a good man now. So she was glad he had gotten over his sense of betrayal at her perceived actions.

  And if she had any choice in the matter, Jace would go to his grave being the man who was good enough to forgive an ex-girlfriend for running off with his brother. He would never know the truth.

  Because that would just hurt him so much worse.

  “What are you thinking about over there?” Jace’s voice broke in to her thoughts. “Whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  This time he was across the table from her in the Omega canteen. It was lunchtime, and while they had been here all night for a dark-based training op, they’d all be leaving to go home for a break soon. The team would be going to Denver tomorrow.

  She shrugged, ignoring his question, since there was no way in hell she was going to answer it truthfully anyway.

  “You worried about something concerning the summit?” he asked between bites of his sandwich.

  This she could answer. “To be honest, I’m concerned about everything to do with this summit. Hitting something this high-profile may not align perfectly with Damien Freihof’s MO, but I think it aligns with his mind-set.”

  “I thought Freihof had been using other people to do his dirty work. Stirring up the pot with people in the past who had an ax to grind with Omega agents and helping him try to get their revenge.”

  “He has.” Lillian’s hands balled into fists. “But then he killed Grace Parker, our team psychiatrist, himself. Brutally, and in front of everyone. I think he’s escalating. And I think trying to humiliate Omega by attacking the summit would definitely suit his purposes.”

  “Sounds like he has it in for you guys. What’s that about?”

  “Evidently we had a hand in his wife’s death. She was killed when Omega went in on a bank raid.”

  “Freihof brought his wife along when he robbed a bank?”

  “No. Freihof has been involved with a lot of different criminal activities for the last fifteen years. But in this case, evidently they both just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone was robbing the bank, the wife freaked out and tried to make a run for it when SWAT arrived, and she got shot and killed. By us. And Freihof has decided to make everyone who has ever been a part of Omega Sector pay for that mistake.”

  Jace seemed to process all that as he ate. “And he maybe has someone helping him? Someone inside Omega?”

  Lillian shrugged. “There’s been no official word, but a lot of rumors. And some of the stuff Freihof has known, he couldn’t possibly have known without help from the inside. I have no doubt there’s a traitor within Omega, as much as I hate to say it. But like Derek said, we can’t all go around accusing one another of being the mole and expect to work effectively as a team.”

  Jace nodded, studying her.

  It had been a long few days and they were all supposed to go home and rest. They would all need to be on high alert at the summit.

  If Lillian was Freihof, the summit was where she would strike. If he could take down the LESS device, he would be serving a great blow to law enforcement all over the country. Doing that while humiliating Omega Sector seemed to be cut directly out of his playbook.

  Not to mention the summit would be crowded with politicians, law-enforcement leaders and ordinary people there to observe or protest. Plenty of people to try to hurt or kill.

  “You headed out?” Jace asked as they finished up their food.

  She wasn’t particularly interested in going back to her empty apartment. She tended to spend as little time there as possible. But no need to advertise that fact. “Absolutely. We all need to get a little R and R before heading to Denver.”

  The rest of the team had already left. Most of the guys had families now. A lot of times Lillian was invited over to their houses for meals or just to hang out. But not right now. The wound of losing Grace Parker was still too fresh, too open. All the guys just wanted to be with their wives and children and hold them close and thank God for them.

  Lillian wasn’t going to boo-hoo just because there was nobody thanking God she was alive. If Jace wasn’t here, she would probably head out to a bar and find a guy to hook up with for a few hours. It was never fulfilling, and sometimes it was downright scary the way she checked out emotionally during sex, the way she didn’t remember any of it even though it had happened just a few minutes before.

  But anything was better than sitting at home alone.

  Yet something about Jace being nearby made the thought of some random, emotionless hookup seem even more unappealing.

  “How about you?” she asked him. “I don’t even know where you’re staying.”

  “Hotel a few blocks from here. There didn’t seem to be much point in renting a place, since I was only going to be here a couple weeks. And I didn’t want to have to drive back and forth every day from my ranch.”

  That made sense. And they were probably paying him enough to make it worth his while anyway.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

  They dumped their trays and headed off in separate directions for the men’s and women’s locker rooms.

  Lillian was used to being in here by herself. It usually didn’t bother her. As a matter of fact, there had been plenty of times when she had to change clothes in front of the guys. She honestly didn’t even think they saw her as a woman anymore.

  She hardly saw herself as a woman anymore. She had all the woman parts but didn’t tend to have many of the emotions that were tied to the female gender. She couldn’t remember the last time she had crie
d.

  She didn’t mind being the only female on the team. She respected her colleagues, they respected her and they trusted her to do her job. She would die before she let down the team. She was part of something bigger and more important than herself, and she loved that.

  But right now she just felt pretty damn alone. Not to mention all ramped up to get to the action tomorrow.

  So she might as well stay here for a while longer and look over again the plans of the Denver city hall, officially known as the Denver City and County Building, where the summit would take place.

  The LESS device was something that would change the face of law enforcement forever. Would allow a true merging of technology in all branches. The ramifications would be significant. Interstate cooperation would be much easier with the LESS system.

  It was her job—the team’s job—to make sure that happened. Studying the building plans one more time could only help.

  She brought her duffel bag out of the changing room with her and moved to the main computer work space area in their building. SWAT members didn’t have their own desks, but they had computers available for the team’s use. They were mostly used for training, updating education, or situations like this, where someone wanted more details about the particulars of an op.

  The big desk gave her plenty of room to set up a notebook and take some notes, as she brought up the building plans.

  The 3-D replication of the building allowed her to take a virtual tour. Extremely helpful. But she knew that whatever she could find on a computer, Damien Freihof could, too.

  She studied the plans for nearly an hour, going over each window, doorway, elevator shaft and staircase. She wanted to be able to find her way around the building even if she was blindfolded.

  She closed down her browser and drew the plans of the first floor from memory, then compared it back to the actual drawing. Pretty close.

  Lillian sat back in her chair, stretching her arms over her head and her legs out in front of her. That was enough for today. She’d already been up all night with the training. It was time to go home.