Ice Cold Read online

  ICE COLD

  Table of Contents

  Terrorist Force Logistical Assault Command

  T-FLAC Black Rose

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  About Cherry Adair

  Reviews

  Terrorist Force Logistical Assault Command

  T-FLAC Black Rose

  ONE

  Montana

  January

  H e came out of the darkness hard and fast. T-FLAC operative Honey Winston let out a hiss of surprise as the man shoved a hard shoulder into her belly, tackling her full force.

  The Maglite flew one way, her SIG the other. The light winked out.

  Darkness.

  Pain.

  Damn it to hell.

  Staggering, she grabbed his shoulder for balance, twisting to counter the attack. Her stiletto-heeled boot slipped on the slick, bloody flagstone. Off balance, she hit the unyielding floor on her back with a teeth jolting thump. Quick as lightning, he straddled her, pinning her in place.

  Honey shot out both hands, grabbed his muscled upper arms, and tried to wrestle him off her hips. Son of a bitch was immovable. She bucked, trying to wedge a leg between their bodies for leverage. No go.

  She didn’t need the smell of death, just feet away, to remind her this guy meant business. She’d barely discovered Jack’s body before the killer returned. Why come back? To do to her what he’d done to her boss? A gruesome, violent stabbing that spoke volumes of vengeance, not to mention sloppy workmanship.

  He was bigger and a hell of a lot stronger. To level the playing field she needed a weapon. If she shifted a few feet, she could maybe grab the KA-BAR sticking out of Jack’s chest. Thrusting her hips upward shifted his body to her chest. Hard to drag in a decent breath with him compressing her lungs. She considered biting whatever was right in front of her sharp teeth. Instead, the shift of his hips gave her the mobility to jackknife her legs up and over his back, then lock her ankles around his neck.

  Slamming the back of her heel into his face elicited a low grunt, but she didn’t hear the crunch of bone she hoped for. He’d reared back just enough to keep his nose intact.

  Damn.

  Torqueing her body, using every bit of strength in her legs, Honey tried to roll him over so she could have the upper hand, if not the upper foot.

  Bastard didn’t budge.

  She tightened her ankles around his neck, using the strength of her thigh muscles to maintain the hold as she tried to pull him over backward. Her lethal heels were a few tantalizing inches from his throat but they were at the wrong angle to be effective, and she didn’t dare release her hold on his throat long enough to reposition and try to stab him with one of the five inch, sharp points. She’d been trained to kill an opponent this way. Unfortunately, he seemed to know all the same damned tricks.

  His hand shot out, fingers closing around her windpipe. Pain exploded in her throat and silver stars swam in her vision.

  Ignoring the pain and the inability to drag in a much-needed breath, Honey struck at his elbow, hitting his ulnar nerve, causing an involuntary flex of his hand. A few seconds to drag in a breath and center her body.

  Almost immediately, he regained control, forcing her hands harmlessly away and bringing back the sparkling galaxy of stars to her vision.

  He was strong, dangerously strong. Even with her ankles wrapped around his throat, he managed to stagger upright and lurch to his feet. Curling her torso, she swung—head down—between his spread legs. He blocked the punch to the groin with his wrist. Honey dropped and rolled before he could grab her again.

  Using the momentum, she shot to her feet and rammed her elbow into his jaw. His mouth snapped shut. He countered by grabbing and twisting her arm over her head, his fingers manacling her wrist as he jerked her body against him. It was like slamming into a rock wall.

  Honey kneed him in the balls. Well, almost in the balls. Her knee slammed into his upper thigh.

  “Coño!” In a dizzying move, hegrabbed her knee, flipping her back to the floor.

  She was good, damn good. The fact he was marginally better pissed her off. She dismissed the bone-jarring, silver-star-inducing slam to the unyielding floor and fought gravity once again to regain her footing. Tricky in high heels. With him crouched over her, restricting her movement, she was like a damned turtle on her back.

  Something hard pressed into her left butt cheek. Could it be…? Ah, a much, much better version of the fabled Princess and the Pea; she’d landed on her gun. With some contortion, she curled her fingers around the custom polymer grip. Now we’re talking!

  Standing over her, he struck like a snake, grabbing and twisting her right arm until she sucked a breath of pain through clenched teeth. Then, crouching beside her, he jammed a weapon against her throat. “Up. Slow and easy.” His voice came velvety soft and lethal in the darkness.

  It occurred to Honey that the Garbage detail would arrive any minute in response to her earlier call. Unless she got the upper hand right now, there might be two bodies to clean up by the time they arrived. She never asked or waited for help. Tonight was no exception.

  “No more fun and games.” Strong fingers manacled her upper arm, as he hauled her to her feet like a bag of horse feed. “Up.”

  Honey’s cheeks burned with anger. She was a trained operative, for God’s sake, yet he’d managed to get the drop on her. Several times.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she pleaded, pitching her voice higher and thinner so she sounded frail and girlie. His hesitation was slight. Most men didn’t like hurting a woman. It was yet another tool in her skill set.

  He underestimated her, and she used his hesitation to her advantage. By the time she was vertical, Honey had her weapon digging into the underside of his chin.

  Standoff.

  “Wanna see who can pull their trigger faster?” she asked coolly, not flinching as the muzzle of his weapon dug into the flesh beneath her ear. He shifted, and like Siamese twins, they moved together, neither letting up on the pressure of muzzle to carotid. He had the advantage of height and weight, but she was extremely motivated to stay alive.

  “Why don’t we see what we’re dealing with here?” The strong grip of his fingers on her arm suddenly withdrew, but before she could react, the overhead chandelier blazed to brilliant life.

  About to deliver a swift chop to his throat, Honey blinked up at him and dropped her hand. Shit.

  They’d never met, but she knew immediately who he was. An electric shiver of pending disaster skittered over her nerve ending at the intense magnetism he exuded without even trying. The hair on her nape rose as those obsidian, long-lashed eyes held hers.

  Trouble with a capital T. In red, flashing neon.

  The Spanish Stallion. “Navarro.”

  Double shit. She schooled her features into a mask of polite inquiry. He was supposed to be waiting for her boss at the airport. What was he doing here, suspiciously moments af
ter Jack was killed?

  Rafael Navarro was striking, shockingly so. He wasn’t conventionally handsome; his face was too hard, too battered. The faint scar, slashing from the corner of his left eye and down his cheek, didn’t distract from his rugged features. It just intensified the impression of how damned dangerous he was, how wild. How reckless.

  Honey bet the scar only enhanced his sex appeal to women. He looked, she thought, annoyed, like he owned the whole damned planet as he glanced from her face to Jack’s corpse, and back again. Awareness shimmied through her body in response to that appraising look.

  No. She was a sensible, pragmatic, by-the-numbers woman. She made damned sure her expression didn’t change, because practical or not, her heart thudded, there was a flutter in her belly, and her skin prickled with awareness. Her physical response to his external appearance doubly annoyed her. She was better than a cheap thrill looking at a good looking man. Even a man as attractive as Navarro. She suspected he was a legend in his own mind, and she was damned if she’d pander to that crap.

  By sheer will, she hadn’t blushed in years, but her cheeks felt hot now. From the unexpected exertion, not because looking at him conjured images of cool sheets and sweaty skin.

  “Winston?” The Spanish in his voice was there only because she expected it.

  Disliking him on sight, she watched him like a Mongoose watched a snake. They stared at each other; their breathing slightly elevated by the exertion. His black eyes seemed to eat the light and were completely unreadable as he took her in.

  Her chin lifted a notch, and her lips tightened in irritation. She wasn’t the one in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I’m not dressed for work.”

  His gaze slowly swept from her head to her toes. Then made the trip back up her skinny jeans tucked into high-heeled, knee-high, Christian Louboutin boots, paused for a nanosecond longer on the curve of her breasts beneath her favorite black cashmere sweater, and after what felt like an eon, his attention returned to her face. “I see that.”

  Now she wished to hell that she’d dug deeper when she’d checked into his classified personnel file. At the time, she’d only wanted to assure herself that her boss would be in good hands. So what, he was a bomb disposal expert and considered the best T-FLAC had? She wanted to know his psychological profile before Jack went off with him to God knows where. Jack was Cybercrimes. A lousy shot, he was useless as a field op. Jack couldn’t strong-arm anyone even if his life depended on it.

  Tonight proved that. Jack was dead.

  Even knowing these limitations, Navarro had specifically asked for Jack for this op. She gave him a stony look. “I dressed for an airport run, not hand-to-hand combat.”

  His gaze fell briefly to her lips. “Clearly not a Girl Scout.” His tone was cool and ironic, his gaze once again steady.

  She purposefully took a moment to return his once-over before she replied. He looked like what he was. A warrior. Nose with a slight hook, dark eyes deeply set. His lean face was tan, indicating he’d just returned from sunnier climates. Glossy, almost stick-straight, black hair brushed his broad shoulders. He wore dark-washed jeans and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up his muscled forearms. He was all about dark and foreboding and looked as though he’d never truly smiled in his life. She didn’t count smirking, sneering, or leering. She noted, with some satisfaction, that she’d put a dent in his all-too-perfect appearance; her bloody handprints stood out starkly against the white fabric.

  He was a hotshot. A breaker of rules. A maverick.

  She was methodical, by the book, and liked order. She also liked men who took the time to shave. At least at the start of an op.

  “I kicked your butt, despite five-inch heels, didn’t I?”

  “Let’s just say we’re evenly matched.”

  “Let’s just say that despite you having the element of surprise and me wearing the wrong outfit, I handed you your ass.” She showed him some teeth in a parody of his smile.

  “Don’t like to lose, do you?”

  “Whoever said it’s not whether you win or lose, probably lost,” she told him coldly while smoothing her hair that had come loose from a neat ponytail. Her other hand was busy holding her weapon to his manly, unshaven jaw. “I’m sick of being held at gunpoint, Navarro. Shoot or back the hell off.”

  His black eyes flickered from her to Jack’s body sprawled nearby in a pool of congealed blood. She turned her head to get her first view of the body in full light and barely managed to keep from wincing. Too many knife wounds to count under a ridiculous amount of blood. A male of Jack’s size would have approximately ten to twelve pints of blood in his body. It looked like ten gallons of blood on the floor.

  She looked away. And damn it, the only other place to look was at Navarro. She took a step back, mirroring his movements as they both holstered their weapons. Tucking a stray strand of pale blond hair behind her ear, she was annoyed to find her heart still beating a little fast as his obsidian gaze skimmed over her again.

  “Obviously, I didn’t kill him,” she told him coolly. “Given the disparity in our heights, I would’ve had to use a stepstool.” Jake was six five, and she, five ten in these particular boots.

  “No doubt there’s one around,” he said dryly. “But I’m pretty sure that in those kick-ass boots, you could’ve reached just fine.”

  Her blood pressure throbbed behind her eyes. It was a little harder to hang on to her cool when she wanted to slap him. Irrational, and totally unlike her to think of resorting to physical violence, even when provoked. “Are you implying you think I did kill Jack?”

  He cocked his head; a supercilious move clearly intended to piss her off. “No blood on your clothing. No defensive wounds—”

  Since the murder was no joking matter, she presumed, despite the lack of evidence, he was serious. “Go to hell.”

  His face relaxed a little. “Someone dispatched Hansen. I know it wasn’t you, Winston; there wasn’t enough time. You didn’t kill him. Question is, who did?”

  She was off the hook because there hadn’t been time?

  Since it was clearly a rhetorical question, Honey didn’t bother responding to it or the insult. She’d personally track down Jack’s killer. She had some free time coming . . . That was none of Rafael Navarro’s business, however.

  “We all have enemies.” Not Mr. Stallion, of course. Admired and fawned over, feted and treated like the prodigal son when he deigned to come into HQ, the man was a living legend. All other operatives wanted to team with Navarro. Herself excluded.

  “Enemies don’t stroll into our homes twenty minutes from T-FLAC HQ and stab us multiple times. Unless you didn’t share something when you called in your hasty report?”

  Honey’s dislike of the man raised two more notches. “I barely had time to make a report.”

  She supposed some women would think his height and broad shoulders attractive. Certainly, the clerical staff at HQ gave him second and tenth looks on the rare occasions he came to Montana. Ha! He’d eat them for breakfast then spit their hearts out between his strong, white teeth.

  Navarro had a reputation that had nothing to do with his admittedly sterling rep as a bomb disposal expert. No matter how hard Honey tried not to listen to gossip and the oohs and ahhs of it all, it was hard to miss hearing what a great kisser, lover, stallion the Spaniard was.

  Catherine Seymour, her mentor and trainer, once confided to Honey that Navarro had made her come just by kissing her.

  Honey gave a mental snort. As if.

  Narrow-eyed, Navarro turned to look at Jack, giving her more time to look at him. The bump on the bridge of his otherwise straight nose indicated it had been broken a time or two. The razor-thin scar gleamed white in the bright light.

  “My report, brief as it was, was complete and professional. This, however,” she pointed at the corpse, forcing herself to display a coolness she didn’t feel, “is sloppy. Rushed. Personal.” Honey paused before continuing. “The house is empty.
” She avoided looking too long at Jack’s body, but her eyes inevitably drew to the dozens of knife wounds. Overkill in every sense of the word. The KA-BAR, eight inches of carbon steel, remained embedded in his heart. “I did a thorough sweep when I arrived.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  The left sleeve of his white shirt had come unrolled. Honey itched to tidy him. Not that she wanted to touch him. She most certainly did not. She liked things neat. He was anything but. She shoved her fingertips into the front pockets of her jeans. “Seven minutes. I was going to take him to the airport to meet you. He was dead when I arrived.”

  She swallowed hard, the only indication she was in any way moved by the violent death of the man she’d worked with for five years. She’d seen plenty of dead people. Plenty of bloody, gory deaths. She’d caused some of those deaths herself in the line of duty. Affected to a certain degree but never this deeply.

  Not that Rafael Navarro would get even a hint how deeply affected she was now. She did her job, didn’t fraternize with anyone she worked with, and minded her own business.

  “Recognize the weapon?”

  “I gave him that knife for his birthday last year—” Too personal. “What are you doing here?”

  “Control notified me that Jack’s wife called in to say he had the flu and couldn’t meet me.”

  “He’s divorced.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed dryly. “I know. It sent up a red flag. What do we know?”

  “I counted thirty-seven stab wounds- Unlikely an accurate count considering the amount of fluids and how close together the puncture wounds are,” she admitted, hating not being one hundred percent accurate before she reported anything. “The one to the heart killed him. He suffered before he died. Someone took their time.” It was almost impossible to be hardened when the person in question was someone she knew and respected. The thought of Jake suffering like this made nausea roll, and she swallowed, because damn it, she would not puke in front of Navarro. “Alarms disabled.” He’d opened the front door to the killer, expecting Honey.

  When she’d fought with Navarro earlier, most of the blood had come off her hands, but she could still feel it between her fingers. Turning slightly away from him, she grabbed a slouchy, black leather tote from a nearby table, removed hand sanitizer, and wipes, and proceeded to clean up methodically. The adrenaline rush was starting to fade, and Honey was annoyed to find her hands shaking. She didn’t want Navarro knowing how freaked out she was over Jack’s violent death.