“Hi,” he returned my greeting kindly. “You’re safe. You can come out.”
With my savior were five other men, all dressed in the same short-sleeve T-shirts under Kevlar vests, cargo pants, and every kind of gun I could imagine strapped to their legs. It was obvious they were a tactical team, but I had no idea for what agency until one of them turned and I saw the star on his belt and then the wordsU.S.Marshalon the back of his vest.
“You work with Eli,” I acknowledged with a sigh.
“Wes Ching, Commander of Special Operations Group. We met at Ian and Miro’s New Year’s Eve party.”
It took me a moment. “Oh!” I gasped happily. “You’re Gail’s husband.”
“Yep,” he said drolly. “That’s me. Gail’s husband.”
“She’s lovely.”
He nodded. “Yes, she is. Come over here to me, all right?”
I moved fast, saw others on his team checking Vincente, Mazzara, and Lincoln for weapons, drugs, anything at all, and they all looked up at me as I was walked out the front door, out into the hall, and was met by Eli.
“I knew you wouldn’t let anything happen to me,” I whispered as I reached him.
He grabbed me tight, crushing me against him, his breath hitching every other second.
“Baby, I’m okay.”
“He hit you. I heard it,” he rasped under his breath, shoving me out to arm’s length, staring at my face for a second and then yanking me forward, off my feet, back into another frantic embrace.
“That slap won’t even leave a mark. I’ve been accidentally hit much harder in practice, on many occasions.”
He was not comforted; I could tell from how hard he was hugging me.
“You scared him,” Wes apprised me, leaning sideways so I could see his face. “Maybe don’t do that again.”
“No, sir,” I agreed.
“Now, don’t move,” Wes ordered, and with a pair of long plastic tweezers, he pulled the earpiece out so quickly I barely felt it.
“You should have been a doctor,” I told him.
“Doctors don’t get to arrest bad guys,” Wes reminded me, patting Eli on the shoulder before he turned and stepped sideways, guarding Eli’s back as someone came yelling at the top of their lungs down the hall. It took me only a moment to recognize Special Agent Stafford’s deep baritone.
“Have you lost your fucking mind? This is a joint DEA and FBI task—”
“We had a report of a civilian in danger,” Wes interrupted him, sounding like he couldn’t give a single fuck. “As said civilian was undercover with a known cartel leader and a suspected drug dealer, we were forced to blow the op and secure this particular civilian.”
“How did you know to—we turned on a jammer, Kohn. What the fuck did you do?”
“Yeah, using the jammer was stupid,” Wes told him. “You knocked out your own comms at the same time. Mr. Harrington couldn’t hear shit.”
“What? No. That’s not supposed to happen. The jammer has no effect on the comms.”
“It was dead.” Wes held out my earpiece for him.
“Why isn’t Kohn—who the hell’re you?”
“Wes Ching, SOG commander for the Northern District of Illinois.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Normally, Eli would have responded since Stafford was coming unglued on Wes, but he was not in any condition to fight. He needed to convince himself I was all right, and that was all he was capable of at the moment.