Page 38 of Crossfire Creek Siege

And just Gage was plenty enough. Mercy, was he.

The fire went through her, racing, consuming, burning her alive from the inside out. Making her want. Making her ache. Her body urged her to back him into the cubicle, pull that shirt off, and take him right here, right now. That would burn off some of this blasted heat building between her thighs.

But it would also burn away what little focus she had left, what little control she still possessed.

That couldn’t happen. That shouldn’t happen.

Even as her body screamed otherwise.

Rena groaned, a sound of pure frustration, and she pressed her palms flat to Gage’s chest, forcing herself to ease back just enough to look at him. Her lips were tingling, her pulse still racing as if she’d run a sprint, and her brain was only just starting to catch up to what they’d done. To how close she’d come to losing herself completely.

His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, his breathing as ragged as hers. The sight of him, wrecked and wanting, made her want to say to hell with it all and pull him back in.

“Another mistake,” she said, her voice low and rough, half-breath, half-curse.

Gage gave a faint, crooked smile, his thumb tracing her jawline in a way that made her shiver. “Not a mistake,” he assured her. “Just lousy timing.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but both of their phones chimed at once, the sharp double ping of a group alert. The moment shattered.

Rena pulled her phone from her pocket, scanning the message. It was from Noah. Briefing room. Now.

Gage huffed out a dry laugh and stepped back, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Guess the universe agrees with you.”

“Yeah,” Rena muttered, forcing her voice steady. “Apparently, fate’s our chaperone.”

They didn’t say anything else as they headed down the hall, the echo of their footsteps filling the silence. The kiss still burned in her mind, the taste of it lingering even as she tried to push it away.

By the time they reached the briefing room, she’d pulled her walls back up, every muscle coiled tight. She took one last breath, squared her shoulders and followed Gage through the door, hoping like hell that this time, they were finally going to get some answers.

Noah stood near the main display wall, Isla beside him, fingers flying over a keyboard while lines of data scrolled past. Cal was there too, looking as wrung out as Rena felt, a cup of black coffee clutched in his hand. A couple of other techs hunched over their stations, the air thick with fatigue and focus.

Noah glanced up as they entered. “Good. You’re here. We’ve got an ID on the guy who set off that grenade.”

Rena stepped closer, eyes narrowing on the image that filled the screen. A mugshot, mid-thirties, with a face that had seen too many fights and too little peace.

“Name’s Curtis Blane,” Noah said. “Ex–private security, dishonorable discharge from the Army for weapons trafficking. He’s been running small jobs ever since, mostly muscle-for-hire work, nothing clean.”

“Was he on the big list of suspects?” Gage asked.

Noah nodded. “Yeah. Isla found him in the original database of people with grudges against, Maverick Ops, Strike Force, and Crossfire Ops. We dismissed him early on since he has no money, no contacts, no resources to put together an operation like this.”

“So he wasn’t the mastermind,” Rena concluded.

“No,” Noah agreed. “He’s a pawn. Someone paid him, equipped him, sent him in knowing he likely wouldn’t walk out.”

The words hit like a dull weight in Rena’s chest. Another expendable soldier in somebody else’s war.

Gage blew out a breath. “Then whoever’s behind this just burned another trail.”

Noah lifted his shoulder. “Maybe. But even pawns leave tracks. And this time, we’ll find where they lead.”

Rena looked back at the image of Curtis Blane—the hard stare, the hollow eyes—and felt the anger tighten in her gut. Whoever had used this man had done it so he could try to kill them. And until they found that puppet master, none of them was safe.

Isla spun in her chair, her neon-green sneakers squeaking against the tile, a grin twitching at the corner of her mouth as if she knew she was about to drop a bombshell.

“Okay,” she said, waggling a tablet in the air. “So, in my relentless quest to find the worst-kept secrets on planet Earth, I dug a little deeper into our charming trio of suspects. And guess what I found?” She didn’t wait for them to guess. “Rhett Danner and Dr. Corrine Astor had a fling. Short. Messy. Ended ugly.”

“Details,” Noah was quick to say.