Zulu, page 21
I could drop my phone into the sea.
I could sail away.
I could protect him.
As if he were here, standing next to me, leaning his strong, muscled, veined forearms on my polished gunwale, his words drifted into my mind as bright as the morning sun.
Give me real, Parisa.
Throwing caution to the early morning sea breeze, I sent a text I never, ever would’ve sent before a dominant Navy SEAL told me last night I could say whatever I wanted.
Me: It’s missing you.
My heart racing, I clutched the phone and stared. Before I could regret three words more than any other action in my entire life, my screen lit up with a new text.
Your Favorite SEAL: Where are you?
Hearing his voice in my head as I read his reply, I could practically taste his dominant, demanding tone as awareness fluttered low in my stomach and spread in a heated rush through my body. Biting my lip, I glanced back at the bed that he’d lain in only once.
Me: In the master stateroom.
Your Favorite SEAL: You’re killing me, woman. Where, geographically, are you?
I looked out at the expanse of water.
Me: Cruising past the Côte d’Azur.
Your Favorite SEAL: Exact location?
I glanced at the time on my phone.
Me: Passing Antibes.
I wanted to get back near Genoa in case Ashraf called and was ready to meet again.
Your Favorite SEAL: Directional heading?
Me: Northeast.
Your Favorite SEAL: Dinner. Tomorrow night. Monaco. Seventeen hundred hours. I’ll contact Tomer to let him know you’re coming into port.
Excitement warred with sensibility.
Me: Are you asking me on a second date?
Your Favorite SEAL: Oh, Kitten. I’m not asking. I’m telling. You’re having dinner with me tomorrow night. Levi will escort you to the restaurant. I’ll make the arrangements.
The corner of my mouth tipped in a long-forgotten muscle reflex.
Me: What if I am not heading to Monaco?
Your Favorite SEAL: You are now, Beautiful.
I smiled. In full.
Another text came in.
Your Favorite SEAL: I saw that.
A small laugh escaped, and I quickly typed.
Me: I do not know what you are talking about.
Your Favorite SEAL: Yes, you do.
Another photo came through.
This time, it took my breath away.
Chiseled jaw, full lips, mischievous smile.
Zane.
Wearing aviators, sitting in the cockpit of his jet, the sleeves of his crisp dress shirt were rolled up as the warm hues of the setting sun cast honey golden rays across his unbelievably handsome face, illuminating him like he was a demigod.
Your Favorite SEAL: I’m smiling too, Kitten. Turn your phone on tomorrow an hour before dinner in case I need to get in touch. See you soon.
I went to type a reply, but a small message appeared that his notifications had been silenced. My phone already in hand, I tried Ashraf’s office again, but the generic voice message came on. I ended the call without leaving a message and tucked my cell in the pocket of my silk robe as the internal line for the yacht rang through to the phone on my nightstand.
Walking over, I picked it up. “Hello?”
Isaiah’s brisk voice filled the line. “Good morning, madam. I just received instructions from Alpha Elite Security that you would like to change course to Monaco?”
“That is correct, thank you.”
Isaiah paused ever so slightly. “The instructions were specifically from Mr. Zulu.”
“I understand.”
“He said Levi is to personally escort you from the ship to the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“To Table d’Antonio Salvatore au Rampoldi.”
I frowned as he rattled off the name of the restaurant with an affect in his tone I did not understand. “Is there anything else, Isaiah?”
His voice reverted back to its usual reserved politeness. “No, madam. Shall I let the chef know you’re ready for breakfast?”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
“Consider it done. Currents permitting, we should arrive near Monaco early this evening. I will update you later this afternoon with a more precise arrival time. Will you be going ashore this evening?”
“Do we need supplies or fuel?”
“No, madam. We restocked and refueled in Saint-Tropez.”
“Then I prefer to stay out to sea until tomorrow evening.”
“As you wish.” He hung up.
Taking my cell back out, I typed in the name of the restaurant Isaiah had mentioned.
Michelin starred, five tables, expensive and exclusive.
Then, unable to stop myself, I opened my messages and clicked on the last photo Zane had sent.
I couldn’t see his eyes through his aviator sunglasses, but I didn’t need to.
His smile said it all.
I was in trouble…in more ways than one.
Zulu
I was late.
Headwinds, a holding pattern for thirty minutes at the Nice Côte d’Azur Airport because of extra air traffic, then a delay for my rental.
Now I was speeding on the A8 autoroute to Monte Carlo, but I wasn’t going to make the reservation time.
Grabbing my cell, I dialed.
Four rings later, her voice filled the line. Reserved, polished and so damn sexy. “My favorite SEAL.” No intonation, I still knew she was teasing me, giving me hell for how I’d programmed my number into her cell.
Sinking harder every time I interacted with this woman, I fucking smiled. “That’s right, beautiful. Glad you got with the program. How are you?” Hearing wind on her end of the line, I surmised she was still on the boat. Good.
“Fine,” she answered hesitantly.
My instincts kicked in. “That didn’t sound like a fine. Out with it, Kitten,” I ordered.
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t apologize. Tell me what that pause was about.”
She hesitated again. “There is nothing wrong.”
Fuck. “You’re second-guessing this.”
“I did not say that.”
She didn’t fucking have to. Her tone said it all. She was an Ivy League educated, multilingual billionaire cruising the Mediterranean on a super yacht with a crew of former Israeli Special Forces catering to her every need. I was clocking hours in a cockpit with one Sig in a shoulder holster and another strapped to my ankle. I hadn’t been shot at this week or had to use lethal force, but no two weeks in my world were the same, and I fucking got it.
I was an emotional liability.
Especially to a woman like her. But I’d given her an in. I’d made a promise. One I’d never offered another woman. All she had to do was reach for it.
Ruthless enough to give her a push, I used her own words against her. “What happened to the woman who said her morning view was missing something?”
“I did not say something, I said you.”
Better. “Yes, you did, sweetheart. Anything change between then and now?”
“No.”
That time, she answered too quickly, but I was already en route, so I was letting it go until I could see her eyes and get my hands on her. “All right, Kitten, taking you at your word. I’m running behind schedule, though. You still on the boat?”
“Yes.”
“Good, stay put. The restaurant’s holding our reservation, so I’m coming to get you.” I exited the autoroute. “Are you berthed or moored?” When I made the arrangements for the Solace to come in, the marina didn’t know if they’d have a berth available.
“We’re berthed in the last slip at the Yacht Club de Monaco.”
“Copy that, Kitten.” Thank fuck Levi didn’t have to tender her to shore. “I’ll be there in twenty. See you soon.”
“See you soon, Mr. Silas.” She hung up.
I was shaking my head but also fucking smiling at her Silas bullshit as my cell rang.
Without glancing at the screen, I answered. “Miss me already?”
“You have a flight from Barcelona to Key West first thing in the morning,” Alpha stated.
Christ. “I’m aware of my schedule.”
“You’re in Monaco.”
Fucking November. “On occasion, it wouldn’t kill November to mind his own damn business.”
“We pay him not to.”
I was Alpha’s first hire when he started Alpha Elite Security. After our first assignment and a close call, he’d made me a silent partner. I hadn’t wanted the responsibility or the headache, I just wanted to fly. But he’d said if anything happened to him, he wanted someone he trusted to carry on the business.
In truth, I think Alpha wanted a face to parade in front of clients. Before the ink was even dry on the paperwork, he had me taking all the new client meetings while he stayed behind the scenes to grow the business. As long as I got to park my ass in the cockpit more than a conference room, I was fine with the arrangement.
“Correction, you pay November to hack the hell out of everything and everyone. And for the record, I don’t know shit about the cryptocurrency you pay him with.” I didn’t touch the books for AES.
“You need to learn. What’s in Monte Carlo?”
Here we go. “The fact that you’re calling, already know where I am, and where I’m heading means you know damn well who’s here.”
“I don’t, actually. I’ve had my head down all day, working a few angles. Which, incidentally, is why I’m calling. Once you land in Key West, I need you for a client extraction. Three-leg trip. Colombia, New York, then back to Key West.”
“Get someone else.” I made a decision. “I’m taking some time off after tomorrow’s flight from Barcelona.”
“You need to do this assignment first,” Alpha ordered.
“Why?” I demanded.
It was only a second, but he hesitated. “You know we’ve been trying to bring Roark MacElheran on board. He trusts you more than he does me. He’s going to need a favor tomorrow and we’re going to need a four man team for an extraction in South America. Use Roark. After we retrieve the client in Colombia and drop him in Manhattan, give Roark an hour on the ground while you refuel, then bring him back to Key West. Turn around in both Colombia and New York will be quick. After that, take a few days. As far as Monaco, if I had to guess, I’d say there’s a certain super yacht that belongs to one of our widowed clients in port, and you flew to Nice after landing in Barcelona tonight, then rented a vehicle.”
Hearing him call Parisa a client suddenly made me irrationally pissed. “First, I’m not on the clock right now. Second, she was never our client. Third, MacElheran doesn’t trust anyone.”
“The widow’s husband was a client, and I’m asking for a favor on the MacElheran front.”
Fuck. Roark was a former Marine and the best pilot I knew. AES needed him. Bringing him on board would give me breathing room, but something was up with Alpha. “Fine on MacElheran, but I’m calling bullshit. You could seal the deal yourself. I don’t know what your agenda is on this, but it’s something. As far as Konstantinos Taralas, that son of a bitch is dead, and Parisa is not now, nor will she ever be our goddamn client. Copy?”
Alpha exhaled, then he did what he rarely did. For a fucking second, he flipped from Alpha, the former SEAL Team leader, now CEO of AES, to Adam Trefor the man. “I’m not telling you how to live your life, brother, but you sure this evening is a good idea?”
“Meaning?” I knew exactly what he meant. I didn’t chase women. Hell, I hadn’t even bedded one since we’d relocated to Miami. Now I wasn’t only chasing, but I’d flown halfway across the globe to do it—twice—for a young, vulnerable, rich as hell, inexperienced, intoxicating beauty.
I got the fucking optics on this. I knew how it looked.
Alpha’s tone flipped back to inscrutable SEAL-slash-CEO. “Instead of banking a few hours off before your flight in the morning, you went up again.”
Alpha was the most impenetrable person you’d ever meet. He took unreadable to a new level, and he was always ten steps ahead. It’s what made him the best on the Teams and now the best in the business. That said, I knew where he was going with this. “Your point?”
“I’m looking out for my closest friend.”
I knew where I stood with Alpha. He was an island. We all were. We protected our brothers with our lives when we’d been on the Teams, and we did it now at AES. But that didn’t mean any of us were tight. We were as close as biological brothers could be, but we took an oath when we became SEALs. The Trident came first.
Duty, honor, way of life—it was a privilege. Then and now, and calls like this didn’t come from Alpha.
Something was up.
“Cut the bullshit, Alpha. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” He paused. “But instinct’s telling me you could be walking into a firestorm.”
“What else is new?” My entire adult life had been about the battle. As SEALs, we were the tip of the spear. The only difference between AES and the Teams was the size of my paycheck and the fact that I was clocking hours in the cockpit instead of the cargo hold. We weren’t always holding the line against terrorists and HVTs anymore, but nothing we did now for AES was without risk.
“All right, I’ve said my piece. But for the record, if Victor could find you, then assume anyone on Kostas’s payroll can too.”
“Victor?” What the fuck? “You said November.”
“No,” Alpha corrected. “You said November. All I did was confirm what we employ November to do and reiterate that you need to learn how to pay him.”
Fucking Christ. “You’ve got Victor hacking my shit now, too?” It was bad enough he’d left a tracker on the Solace. Shit, maybe I had been spending too much time in the cockpit and not enough time on the ground keeping an eye on the business.
“I’m not having him do anything. Conlon does what he wants, when he wants. You couldn’t leash him if he wore a collar. You knew that when we hired him. Nothing’s changed, except now he’s taken up cyber stalking.”
I turned into the Yacht Club de Monaco. “You sure we should be encouraging this?” Despite Victor’s surface level amicability, Alpha was right. There was no containing him.
“I’m sure that anything that keeps him out of the private gyms he manages to find in every city where we open an office is better for AES.”
Private gyms, my ass. “They’re fight clubs with release forms and NDAs.” Both he and Echo frequented them. Although I was pretty sure Echo only went in hopes of seeing Victor get his ass kicked.
“Either way, not my business and original point stands. Victor doesn’t have half the skill set that November does with a laptop and internet connection, and he still found you. Watch your six.”
“Message received.” I took his warning for exactly what it was, but then I used the in. “What did November dig up on the Taralas-Bahar connection? All he said to me was that it was money related.” November told Alpha shit he didn’t tell anyone else. Always had. Maybe he didn’t actually know anything else on this, but maybe he’d given Alpha intel he hadn’t given me.
“Nothing,” Alpha replied in a lethally calm tone that told me he was pissed. “Which is more alarming than the fact that after three weeks, November still doesn’t have an ID on any of the four men who were with Kairos that night at the marina.”
That caught my attention. “You didn’t tell me you were still chasing down those IDs. I thought you dropped the Taralas brothers from your radar. Why are you still tracking Kairos’s muscle?”
“Call it instinct.”
Alpha’s instincts were always spot on. They’d saved us more times than I could count when we’d been on the Teams. Parking my rented Range Rover, scanning the length of the dock, the Solace was hard to miss. It was the largest fucking boat in the marina. “Now I’m thinking about Kairos’s muscle as well as him and his fucking brothers. Christ, even taking this woman to dinner is a risk.”
Alpha paused. Then he said exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “I’m not going to argue that she’s not an obvious K&R target or that we still don’t know what Kostas wanted with her the night of the wake.”
“Add in the fact she has a crew of former IDF members who were forced into early retirement because they were burned, and this shit just gets more complicated.” She was exposed as hell. “You trust that captain she has?”
“No more or no less than any of her other crew.”
Scanning the marina again, glancing at the Solace that may as well have been lit up like a fucking Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center the way it stood out, I couldn’t ignore my own instincts anymore. “I’m at the Yacht Club de Monaco, and I’m calling in a return favor. I want backup tonight. There’s a helo service out of Barcelona.” I glanced at my watch. “I’ll give them a call. I flew over with Blade, Whiskey and Echo. Blade vanished after we landed in Spain, and Whiskey said he had something to handle, but Echo was still at our safe house when I left for Nice. If Echo gets in the air in the next—”
“Blade’s already en route to your location. ETA ten minutes.”
Fucking hell. “You saw this coming.”
Ever the diplomat, Alpha played it cool. “We can’t afford to have anyone offline right now. I need you on that flight in the morning. Sending Blade was a precaution. You won’t know he’s there, but use him if you need him. He’s been briefed.”
Translation, Blade was already on the clock, on AES’s dime. Christ. “Thanks.”
“Welcome. Don’t fly one of the Gulfstreams solo again. Not unless it’s an emergency.”
Alpha didn’t bitch me out for using a company jet for personal shit. He didn’t care about money in that sense. He cared about protocol. The fleet of Gulfstream 650s we had were two-pilot birds. In a pinch, you could fly one solo, and I had, many times, but it wasn’t safe.
Properly schooled, I took the heat. “Good copy.”
“Enjoy dinner.” Alpha hung up.
Parisa
Ending the call with Zane, I looked out at all the lights of the Yacht Club de Monaco.
