“You trusted me?” she questioned him in amusement. “That was your first mistake, Rick. Trusting me. After what your father did to me, you should have known better.”
His father. He’d married Rick’s mother rather than Mae. He’d had a short fling with her, and decided, as his father told Rick later, that Mae’s temper was more than he could handle. Weeks later Rick senior had met the half-Mexican Maria Lopez and within months had married her.
Mae had seemed to let the past go easily. She married Aaron Livingston, raised a son of her own, and buried them several years before Sienna’s death. The son was killed in Iraq; his father had had a heart attack a year later.
He shook his head wearily. “This isn’t about Dad,” Rick said sadly. “We both know better.”
“He married a dirty fucking Mexican,” she said, sneering. “He couldn’t even fuck something decent, he had to screw that Mexican bitch instead, didn’t he?”
His mother had been no bitch. She had been kind, filled with laughter. Just as his father had been.
“You’re a part of the militia,” he stated, watching Hannah’s face from his peripheral vision. He knew what was coming. He could feel it. He could see the triumph and the maliciousness in Mae’s face, and he knew.
“Just as Sienna was.” She snickered. “We used to laugh about you, you know. We were good, weren’t we, Rick? We fooled you all along.”
“You fooled me,” he admitted. He’d known all along that whoever the mole was in the department was good, damned good. If it had been Sienna herself, alone, then he could have understood it. She was his wife, she had access to parts of his life and his job that others wouldn’t have had. She and Mae, together, it would have been incredibly easy to fool him.
“And you killed Sienna,” Mae said.
He barely held back the flinch that would have shook his body at the vicious statement.
He stared back at her silently as she laughed with pure pleasure.
“Did he tell you that he killed his wife?” Mae asked Hannah, jerking at her hair again. “His sweet, loving wife. He blew the back of her head off. Did he tell you that? Did he tell you how easily she fooled him? That she was a plaything for the militia? A little camp whore with a taste for cocaine. God, she was so good at fooling him, it was incredible. And so amusing.”
Hannah stared back at him, her gaze desperate, her eyes filled with demand, almost a warning, as he watched her. As though the information Mae was giving her didn’t matter. That Hannah didn’t care that he had killed his wife. That she didn’t care that his wife had been addicted to cocaine, and had betrayed her husband, her friends, her community.
“I’m glad you were amused,” Rick said quietly.
“Was amused.” Mae breathed out with an air of boredom as the gun pressed deeper against Hannah’s neck. “I’m no longer amused. You betrayed Sienna, Rick, and the BCM takes care of their own. They avenge their own. Tonight, you’ll get to watch your new lover die. Then I’ll kill you.”
There was that look in Hannah’s eyes again. The warning.
She had three brothers. That thought hit his mind suddenly. Three brothers that were in the marines. Had they taught her to protect herself?
Rick’s jaw tightened as he fought the fiercely protective instincts rising inside him now. He had to trust her. That was what she was telling him with her eyes. She wanted his trust.
“Tell her good-bye nice and sweet, Rick,” Mae suggested, her smile demented, her gaze filled with fury and malicious hatred.
“Hannah.” He whispered her name, giving a tiny imperceptible nod.
Mae moved the gun a fraction away from her neck, just enough that she could swallow, lift her head the slightest degree. He watched her eyes, saw the acknowledgment in her gaze. And then she went into action.
She jerked, kicked, her elbow went back, and at the same time she managed to surprise Mae enough to push her head forward.
Mae hadn’t expected her to make a move. Had she thought they would just die? Go like lambs to the slaughter?
As Hannah fought, the bathroom seemed to explode. Rick’s arm came up and he fired, just as the bathroom windows shattered, dark figures flying through the openings. Rick grabbed Hannah, jerking her into his arms and pulling her to the floor with him.
He’d hit Mae, he knew he had. The men coming through the windows weren’t the enemy, they were friends.
The Elite Ops rushed through the room, as silent as the night after the crash of the windows. Some grabbed Mae, restraining her, checked her wound, while others raced to secure the house.
It was surreal. Relief washed through Rick with a force that left him weak as he quickly got to his knees, turned Hannah onto her back, and stared down at her in shock.
She was laughing. He
r green eyes were lit with life and love and adventure. And she was laughing.