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Troublemaker Page 100
Author: Linda Howard

Maybe it all meant something.

He wasn’t worried about figuring things out; he had time. Correction: He hoped he had time. He hadn’t heard from Axel except that one letter, but truthfully that had been one letter more than he’d expected. He had no way of pointing Axel in any direction, so they had to wait for the bad actors to make a move—and so far they were sitting tight. Why wouldn’t they? Unless they knew he’d remembered whatever it was he didn’t remember, they had nothing to lose by waiting. They wouldn’t move until they had to move, which left him and Axel sitting on their thumbs.

What if he got a call from Axel tomorrow that the trap had been sprung, the assholes caught, and he should report back to the teams ASAP? For the first time ever, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to have more time with Bo.

If Axel knew, he’d shit bricks. Despite some logical reasons for sending Morgan to recuperate at Bo’s, mostly he’d done it out of spite, and Morgan knew it. That was Axel. He was mean and immature and vindictive to everyone he perceived as being against him, which was balanced by being very good at his job and almost pathologically loyal to “his” men. He would never have sent Morgan here if he’d had any inkling that it might cost him one of his team leaders.

His own thought startled Morgan. Would he leave the GO-Teams to be with Bo? Would he have to? Some of the team members were married, and they made it work. Some of them got married and then divorced, but didn’t that happen to people no matter what kind of job they had?

Okay, double fuck, was he really thinking what he was thinking?

He looked at her sleeping face, the wide mouth relaxed and soft, her dark lashes fans beneath those big dark eyes that were closed now, but he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she opened them and smiled at him. And if she did, he knew what his reaction would be. He’d have her naked in no time, and Tricks would probably be giving them that reproachful look again.

Triple fuck, since he was thinking what he was thinking, he had a big decision to make: did he come clean about Axel’s plan to set up him as bait that could backfire and draw some real danger here, or did he hope it never came to that? The last option was the easiest, but it was probably the stupidest.

It was his call, and he had to make it.

CHAPTER 21

WHEN BO WOKE UP, SHE GAVE A LITTLE HUM OF RELAXED contentment, stretched, then sat up and raided the cooler for a bottle of water. As she twisted the cap off, she asked Morgan, who was lying with his arms crossed behind his head, “How long did I sleep?”

“About an hour.” His mouth quirked and his eyes glinted with humor. “You don’t snore, and I didn’t see you drool, but I can’t rule that out.”

“Everyone drools,” she replied comfortably and took a deep drink of water. “Do you snore?” She stretched to get Tricks’s water bowl and poured some water into it because Tricks had raised her head at Bo’s voice, signaling that her nap was at an end too. Tricks immediately got to her feet and came over for a drink.

“Depends.” He ran his hand down Tricks’s back. “If I’m on a mission, no, probably because I never go into really deep sleep. But when I get home after crossing so many time zones that I don’t know what day it is, I definitely snore.”

“Huh. I guess snoring could be dangerous when you’re on a mission.” She’d never thought of snoring in those terms before; how odd and disturbing and a little sad that something so human could, under the conditions he considered normal, be a threat to his life.

“Depends on where we are. Sometimes we’re in a safe house in a city, so snoring isn’t a big deal.”

“Can you tell me what you do?”

“Some of it. Most of it is classified.” He squinted at the lake as if considering what to say, how much he could say. “I’m the leader of a GO-Team. GO stands for global offensive; we get sent wherever we’re needed, whether it’s legal or not, which is the main reason it’s classified. Maybe we have to defuse a developing situation, take a power player out of action, things like that. Don’t ever Google anything I’m telling you or it could land you—and me—in a world of shit. But mostly you.”

“Promise.” She didn’t ask what taking someone “out of action” entailed, but she had a good guess, and Googling anything about the GO-Teams would be an act of idiocy.

That was what his life was like, where the least thing could trigger extreme action and reaction. She couldn’t imagine the pressure and stress, though probably every person who was in that line of work was an adrenaline junkie, which meant the man beside her likely was too. To test that theory she asked, “Do you jump out of planes?”

“If I have to. Not my favorite thing.”

That was kind of reassuring; she’d always wondered what brain fart drove people to parachute for pleasure.

She thought of something else. “Set explosives?”

“Got an expert who does that, but I know how.”

“Ride motorcycles?”

“Hell no! Those fuckers’ll kill you.”

His vehemence made her burst out laughing. “And those other things won’t? And, uh, are you forgetting why you’re here in the first place?”

He scratched his nose. “I guess it depends on what you’re used to.” Shrewdly he added, “If you’re trying to find out if I like the action, the answer is: to some extent. It can be a hell of a lot of fun, kicking ass and blowing shit up. Mostly I like knowing that what I do makes a difference, but I like a lot of things about being stateside too. Plumbing that works. The food. We have the best junk food, you know that?”

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Linda Howard's Novels
» Kiss Me While I Sleep (CIA Spies #3)
» All the Queen's Men (CIA Spies #2)
» Kill and Tell (CIA Spies #1)
» Cry No More
» Dream Man
» Ice
» Mr. Perfect
» Now You See Her
» Open Season
» Troublemaker
» Up Close and Dangerous
» White Lies (Rescues #4)
» Heartbreaker (Rescues #3)
» Diamond Bay (Rescues #2)
» A Game of Chance (Mackenzie Family #5)
» Midnight Rainbow (Rescues #1)
» Mackenzie's Magic (Mackenzie Family #4)
» Shades of Twilight
» Mackenzie's Pleasure (Mackenzie Family #3)
» Son of the Morning