Raines, Elizabeth - Wanted [Wicked Missions 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

Izzie nodded and she put a hand on Achchim’s shoulder. “He’s been advised of his rights, and he’s definitely
not
talking to us.”

“Touch don’t!” Achchim looked ready to take a bite out of Izzie’s hand.

Izzie pulled back her hand. “You’ve got no sense of humor today.”

“Doesn’t matter if he talks or not,” Alayna replied. “The arrest warrant for Carlos Pontierri came out this morning. All we’ve gotta do now is pull the net closed, and we’ve got him.” She looked over at Callie again before shifting her gaze to Spencer. “Has she agreed yet? I mean, her sister
did
help bring down Syrus Graveland. Will she help with Carlos?” Her eyes fixed on Callie. “We’re still trying to find out about Lyrianna for you. I promise we’ll keep looking. Everyone in I.D.E.A. is pitching in to find out why in the hell she disappeared from that prison shuttle.”

Before Callie could even ask what in the fuck was going on, Spencer fisted his hands against his hips and glared at Alayna. “I told you already. We’re not putting Callie in the line of fire. There’s gotta be another way to get Carlos to crawl out from whatever rock he’s hiding under.”

Callie’s mouth kept opening and closing like some fish gasping for water. What was I.D.E.A? What did Lyrianna have to do with all this?

Hammond nodded. “We’ll flush him out without Callie as bait.”

She finally found her voice. “What in the hell’s going on here? I…I don’t know what any of you are talking about!”

Izzie threw an exasperated gasp at the men. “You didn’t tell her yet? What in the hell were you doing over there all afternoon?”

Hammond rolled his eyes. “What do you
think
we were doing?”

She laughed. “What I wish I was doing. But somewhere in that fuck fest, couldn’t you have found enough time to say, ‘Callie, we’re not drug smugglers. We’re I.D.E.A. agents?’”

The world seemed to stop spinning for a moment, as all movement in the cargo hold stilled in Callie’s thoughts. She stared at Hammond and Spencer as if she’d never met them before, her mind trying to comprehend what Izzie had just said. Words flew threw her mind like shooting stars, each one bursting into a painful light that illuminated her worries.

I.D.E.A
. Now, she remembered. Bromond and Rozale had been all abuzz about the war on drugs. I.D.E.A. was the Interplanetary Drug Enforcement Agency.
Agents.
Her lovers were I.D.E.A. agents?

Spencer came to stand in front of her and set his hands on her shoulders. “Callie… We were going to tell you. I promise, we were going to tell you.”

She looked up into his eyes, still not sure she understood. “Tell me what? That I have no idea who you really are?”

“We don’t smuggle drugs. We never did.” He stroked his palms down her arms.

“But I was there! You had the Ampirica! You took the money from that horrible man! You said you and Hammond were partners!” She felt as if she was caught in some weird vortex that was altering time and space. None of this made a lick of sense.

Hammond joined him, standing at Spencer’s side. He reached out to take one of her hands in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Spencer and I
are
partners. We’ve been trying to stop some of the black market drug trade between Rozale and several other planets. We were setting up a sting to get to Carlos Pontierri. You stumbled across it and got caught in the crossfire.”

Callie felt as if someone had punched her in the face and she just didn’t have enough sense to fall down. Part of her was elated. The men she loved weren’t criminals—they were heroes.

But her heart was heavy with knowing they’d been lying to her for so long—as long as she’d known them. Why couldn’t they have been honest with her about something so important?

Spencer’s warm hand caressed her cheek as he smiled down at her. “Aren’t you happy about the news?”

A tear spilled over her lashes. “You lied to me. You both lied to me.”

“We had to,” Hammond replied. He brushed her tear away with the back of his knuckle. “We didn’t know anything about you. Hell, Callie. The first time I saw you, you were pointing a pistol at my back. Remember?”

She nibbled on her lower lip and nodded, glad he was helping her figure the whole mess out.

“We were going to tell you, baby,” Spencer said, stroking her cheek with his calloused fingers. “Once we got you back from Achchim, we were going to tell you.”

“We just got too…busy today,” Hammond added with a wink. “
Good
busy, but…busy.”

Callie couldn’t stop a smile at that remark and the fact that a light blush tinted Hammond’s cheeks.

Her mind might not be able to sort out the strange turn of events, but her heart certainly could. Had Spencer and Hammond been black market smugglers, she would still love them. Now, she had a reason not only to love them, but to love their line of work. Her men really
were
heroes. “Okay.”

“That’s it? It’s that easy?” Spencer asked, his eyes searching hers. “Just…okay?”

She nodded, not sure what else to say. Her guys were right—they really hadn’t had a chance to talk to her, and when they first captured her, they’d known nothing about her. It was clear they’d been protecting her from the moment back on Bromond when Hammond threw himself on top of her body to shield her from Carlos Pontierri’s henchmen. They’d spirited her away from that desert planet to save her life, and when Achchim took her, they’d come searching for her. “I understand now. It all makes sense. Why you dragged me onto the
Ecstasy
. Why you didn’t want me to hear your conversation with Izzie and Achchim. I just wish…you’d have trusted me more. But I can see why you protected the secret.” She turned to Izzie. “I take it you were undercover when you were pretending to work with him, right?”

Izzie smiled and nodded. “Alayna and I were trying to get into Markus Graveland’s good graces the same way Spence and Hammond were after Carlos Pontierri.”

“Problem now,” Alayna said, “is getting a chance to grab up Carlos. He’s lying low, and there’s not too much that’ll bring him slithering out into the sunlight.”

Thinking about Carlos Pontierri wasn’t on Callie’s radar at that moment. She wanted to focus on her guys. “I get it now. And I’m…happy.”

Hammond grinned. “It’s a lot better to love a couple of I.D.E.A. agents than drug smugglers, isn’t it?”

She grinned back. “Yeah, it is. And I do love you. Both of you.”

Izzie’s snorted laugh broke the moment. “Now that we’ve got
that
settled, what are we gonna do about Carlos?”

“We’ll find a way to catch him,” Spencer said, his voice solemn, “without using Callie as bait.”

“Why would I be bait?” Since she didn’t even know the man, she couldn’t understand why her name kept coming up whenever they talked about capturing him.

“You,” Alayna said, “will bring him out of hiding. He wants you. Bad.”

“I didn’t mean to shoot him!”

“But you did,” Izzie countered. “Shot his damn nose off. He hates you enough to come out of hiding just to grab you up.”

“We’re not making Callie a part of this,” Hammond insisted.

With a nod, Spencer added, “We can get him without her.”

Callie’s mind was whirling as she thought about the consequences. “What if I do it?”

The men gaped at her. Izzie and Alayna, on the other hand, were grinning.

“Seriously,” Callie pressed on. “What if I do this for you? What do I get in return?”

A growl rose from Hammond’s chest. “You better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

She tried to feign innocence. He couldn’t possibly know what ideas were tumbling through her mind. “I have no idea what—”

“Oh, come off it, wildcat. Who do you think you’re talking to? You want them to promise you the Ampirica.”

He was right, of course. Not that she’d let him know that. “No. I don’t.”

A snorted laugh slipped out of Spencer, making Callie frown. “Sure you do,” he said.

“I want more than that. I want drugs for my kids whenever they need them. Forever.”

“Are you crazy?” Alayna asked.

Callie shrugged. “Probably. But I’ve watched little girls who are nothing but innocents suffer and die from lack of a simple medicine just because they had the audacity to be born with vaginas on a planet where women are treated worse than trash. So if I’m gonna put my life on the line to catch this bad guy, I want something in return.”

“I.D.E.A. will never agree to that,” Izzie said, folding her arms over her breasts.

“Then you’ll have to convince them,” Hammond said.

Callie’s mouth fell open in surprise. “You’d let me do this?”

His nod was another surprise. “But only if Spencer and I are with you to protect you.” His hands settled on her shoulder. “You’ll do it whether we want you to or not, so we might as well make sure we’ve got your back.”

She couldn’t help but smile. Hammond knew her—better than she’d ever thought he could. “Think you can get I.D.E.A. to agree?” she asked Izzie. “Look, all they have to do is direct captured shipments to me. That’s it. Don’t they usually destroy stuff when they capture it?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

Hammond interrupted her. “We can sell the proposal as a way to cultivate public support. You know, look how great our organization is. We take things from crooks and give them to needy kids.”

Callie favored him with a smile and a quick kiss. “Exactly.” She leveled a stare at Izzie, letting her know she refused to budge on her demand.

The redhead took a long time thinking it over. “Let me see what I can do.”

It wasn’t a promise, but Callie knew she’d won this round.

Chapter 10

“No matter what, you stay close to me. Understand?” Alyana’s voice was chillingly calm from behind the veil concealing the lower half of her face. Her short, dark hair was under a scarf, just as Callie’s braid was hidden.

Callie could hardly hear Alayna’s words over the noise of her pounding heart. “I understand.” As if she needed to be warned. She was dangling herself in the souk as bait—standing in the open marketplace and waiting for Carlos Pontierri. Visions of a snake, poised and ready to strike, raced through her mind. She could remember every detail of his bloated face, and her gaze scanned every man she saw, searching for him. The oppressive Bromondi heat bore down on her, making sweat trickle between her breasts and run down her back. She longed to throw off the heavy robe and just be out in public in her tank top and shorts like the men moving around the vendors’ booths.

Bromond sucks
.

Then a familiar face came into view, although it certainly wasn’t the one she was expecting. Cassie gasped when she saw the tall, thin man with the buzzed black hair.

Mikel
.

Damn, but she hadn’t even thought about him from the moment she’d met Hammond and Spencer. And once they’d dragged her along on this wonderful adventure, she’d almost forgotten her old boyfriend even existed. He was looking over some merchandise being offered at a small tobacco stand.

Surprise, surprise
.

Callie shook her head, remembering how she’d begged him to quit smoking time and time again because it bothered her enough she was sure she was allergic. Not only did it make her eyes water and her nose run, but the smell always clung to his hair and his clothing. Yet Mikel never even
tried
to give up the nasty habit. In fact, Mikel never really cared much about what Callie wanted, regardless of the topic. They ate what he wanted to eat. They went where he wanted to go. They did what he wanted to do. He was nothing but a control freak.

So why in the hell had she even thought of him as a boyfriend?

Loneliness
. That was the only real answer. Her life had been so full of the children she cared for, but she’d been lonely for adult company—adult
male
company. She’d been looking for love, and she’d mistakenly thought Mikel fit that bill. Now that she knew what love really was, she looked back on what she’d had with Mikel as nothing more than a bad dream.

God willing, he’d quickly finish whatever he was doing and wouldn’t even notice her. Hell, if he recognized her, he could fuck up the whole plan!