Bang: B-Squad Book Two (4 page)

I
saac hadn't whacked
off in the shower so much since he'd first started getting boners.

Masturbation wasn't exactly the thing he should be thinking about the day after Tamara had turned him down for a date again...but it was. Like an asshole, he couldn't stop thinking about how badly he wanted to fuck her—no, like a dammed sap he couldn't stop thinking about her, just her—even as he stood in the middle of the Devil's Dip Gym filled as usual with sweaty, young fighters determined to prove themselves, grizzled trainers, and managers with dollar signs in their eyes.

He gave each one a hard look, but no one set off his danger detector. Lash and Keir Locke, B-Squad's resident fixer, had gone through the building's closed-circuit video streams, phone records, and anything else that might tip them off about how Wolczyk had gotten turned on to the possibility Tamara was hiding out under the B-Squad umbrella. She was Taz's ex-wife, so it made sense to check the place out, but the question was, had the bounty hunter almost clapped eyes on her because of dumb luck or something else?

Before he could complete a second scan of the room, Kelvin Park stepped into his field of vision—at least the bottom half of it. Kelvin may have been as muscled and tough as a cornered bull hopped up on meth and tequila, but at five feet, eight inches tall, he wasn't coming close to blocking out Isaac's view of the possible suspects.

"You again?" The gym manager pivoted to stand beside Isaac and then held out a Styrofoam cup of sludge with delusions of being coffee.

"Keeping track of me? I'm touched." He accepted the cup and shot back a mouthful of lukewarm liquid.

It was strong enough to make his eyes water and his chest sprout new hair. Whatever Park was putting in the coffee pot it shouldn't be given to small children or the mentally unbalanced.

The other man snorted. "More like wondering why in the fuck you're repeatedly showing up here like head lice in a pre-school."

"Sage got sent home again?"

Kelvin had more war stories from being a single parent to a four-year-old princess in training than the grizzliest Recon staff sergeant. The latest all centered around the Battle of Head Lice Hill. Listening to his stories had Isaac's whole body itching.

"That shit is the plague." The gym manager scratched the back of his skull, caught himself in mid-itch and groaned. "It's starting to mess with my head."

"Mayonnaise." He gripped the cup tighter to keep from scratching the sudden phantom itch, cracking the Styrofoam and soaking his hand before he could drop it in the trash can next to Kelvin's desk near the gym's front door. "Slick it on there, have her sleep in a shower cap and suffocate the suckers."

One eyebrow raise was all it took for the other man to signal that he hadn't missed that overreaction. "And exactly how do you know this?"

"Five sisters. All younger. Single mom." He took a towel off the stack on the corner of Kelvin's desk in easy grab-and-go reach for the occasional blood-spurting nose after a hard hit and wiped the coffee off his hand. "There was no such thing as 'not my problem' in our house."

A quick flick of his wrist and the towel landed in the canvas laundry bag on the floor. Oh yes, he'd been house trained and then some. He knew when to come armed with chocolate and when retreat was the only option—something that had saved him more than once when it came to the women he loved and the ones he only loved for a night.

In the ring, two fighters switched from silent sparring to shoving and hurling curses at each other. The light heavyweight in green shorts got out something about the other fighter's mom and donkey dick when a trainer stepped between them. Neither fighter looked ready to let go, though. Park barked out an order for the two smack-talking idiots to cut the shit and they backed off. Proof that when it came to brawling, testosterone had nothing on estrogen—even the pip-squeak variety.

After a shouted snarl that heads mattered more in a match than fists, Kelvin turned back to Isaac. "It really works?"

He nodded as he scanned the gym for unfamiliar faces. "Anyone new hanging out here lately?"

"I'll give you the same answer as I gave you yesterday and the day before and the day before that. No."

Not that he'd been expecting anything different, but a break would be nice. Until he could nail down who had tipped off Wolczyk about the party, he wouldn't be able to determine if she was still in danger from Fane and his shitballs-crazy cult members. "No one asking about Tamara?"

"People mostly keep to themselves. They don't chat. It's a gym, not a women's bathroom."

He cut a glance at the other man. They both knew that was some high-frequency bullshit. A gym was guaranteed to be filled with the stink of sweat and gossip about who was doing what, who, and when.

"Anyone acting weird?" he asked.

"Besides you and that one there—who has every fucking reason in the world to spend hours every day pounding the shit out of that heavy bag?" Kelvin nodded toward Gidget Harms, grim-faced and dead-eyed, pummeling the black and red bag chained to a support beam. "Not any more than normal. You gotta be at least a little crazy to want to step into the ring and face off against someone who wants to beat your head in. It's almost as bad as those poor idiots who keep circling around the same woman who doesn't have one little bit of interest in him." He didn't bother to smother his smirk. "Not that you know what that's like."

The man had the subtlety of a two-by-four studded with nails. "You're a fucking riot, Kelvin."

He just grinned. "That's what they say."

Refusing to cop to the inner voice echoing everything Kelvin was goading him about, the guy code mandated that he couldn't leave without delivering one last little verbal love tap. "Good luck with the lice. If your head starts itching, don't wait to check it out. Those suckers love to jump from one head to the other. Makes me itchy just thinking about it."

"You're a real dick, Camacho." Kelvin flipped him off.

He returned the non-verbal endearment. "That's what they say."

As he made his way past the main sparring ring, the speed bags, and the fighters practicing footwork in front of the mirrors, he took narrowed down approaches to get the most information possible out of Gidget. The woman was on the thin edge and was just as likely to jump the line as she was to stay sane. Not that anyone could expect her to be any different. It had only been a few months since the B-Squad had rescued her from a whack job on the DEA's Top Ten. Yasmin Romanow had a personal grudge against the women of the B-Squad and had kidnapped Gidget and then used her as a human guinea pig for six months, testing out the mind-control drug Genie's Wish. During the rescue op, Bianca had gotten drugged and nearly killed Taz on Romanow's orders. The whole thing had nearly gone down in a ball of flames, but the team had managed to make it out and saved Gidget. She'd come home physically unharmed, but hurt in a whole other way.

He hadn't known her before she'd been kidnapped. From what he could gather, she'd been just another carefree, rich party girl without a single person in the world who cared for her besides Bianca, Vivi, Lexi and Elisa—her girls from St. Bernadette's Academy for Young Ladies, a sort of reform school for rich girls gone bad. They'd been the ones determined to find her, but the woman they'd brought back wasn't the one they'd known from before. An air of angry fragility hung over her, but he couldn't help but think there was more strength inside her than she let show. No one could have survived what she had without it.

Giving the heavy bag one last punch, she turned as he approached and sat down on the wooden bench in front of the lockers. Bright red hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, pale skin pink with exertion, and sweat turning her oversized gray T-shirt black in spots, she kept her gaze on the men sparring in the ring instead of Isaac who stood in front of her.

Okay. This was going to go well, he could just tell. "Hi Gidget."

Her gaze flickered over to him for half a second before snapping back to the fighters.

Strike one. Good thing he didn't give up easy.

"You down here every day?"

Acting like he wasn't even there talking to her, Gidget lifted her right wrist to her mouth, took the Velcro flap of her training glove between her teeth and yanked it open.

Strike two. Way to suck wind, Camacho.

"Have you noticed anyone out of place? Heard of anyone asking about Tamara? Know of anybody who knew the B-Squad would be gathered at the engagement party?"

Gidget trained her focus on him, but didn't say a word. She just went to work on her other glove.

Okay, she was looking at him. Glaring. Snarling a little. But there was eye contact. That was progress, right? Shoving back the annoyance at the lack of answers from anyone about how Wolczyk knew to show up at Taz's and Bianca's engagement party, he pushed forward. Interrogation wasn't his thing—his patience was for shit—but he refused to give up.

"Look, Tamara's hiding for a damn good reason, but the asshole found her anyway. I've got to figure out how before he realizes he hit the jackpot and comes after her."

Her only response was to pull off both gloves and reach for the water bottle next to her on the bench. She took a long drink then stood up as if he hadn't been there at all and headed for the locker room. It was enough to shred the last frayed thread of patience. Without thinking it through, he grabbed Gidget's elbow and stopped her in mid-step.

"There's a good chance her life—and that of a sixteen year old girl—is at stake if he finds them. If you know anything that might help..."

He followed her gaze down to his hand on her arm. Shame, cold and heavy, sank down on him and he let go. Neither of them moved. The request hung in the air for a second before crashing to the ground and imploding upon impact.

"Gidget, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—" He fumbled for a proper apology. "I know you've been through a lot and I shouldn't have—"

"Green shorts," she said, her voice raspy and low.

His brain tried to catch the secret meaning behind her first words. "What?"

"Getting out of the ring now. He earns extra cash running errands for Bianca. He helped run things over to Corsair Club for the engagement party."

Fuck. Here he was stuck in his own head when he should have been thinking about what was going on in hers. You're a real asshole, Camacho.

"Thanks, Gidget."

She dipped her chin in a sharp nod. "Don't let them get her."

Then without another word, she tucked her arm in close to her side to avoid touching him and walked past him to the locker room.

He pivoted to get a look at the fighter in the green shorts who'd just taken off the padded face protection Kelvin insisted fighters wear when sparring. The kid was young, with an eager face and a cocky grin. That wasn't what set off Isaac's danger alert though—it was the woman strutting across the gym in high heels and an ass-hugging blue skirt that made his cock immediately stand up and say hello.

What in the hell was Tamara Post doing downstairs in the Devil's Dip Gym?

As if his gaze had weight, she brought her hand to her cheek and turned. The second she spotted him, her blue eyes narrowed and she made a sharp turn to come straight at him. Fuck. She was a sight to behold. The ice queen melted a little more each time they met. Pretty soon she'd be blazing and he couldn't wait for that. He had every intention of going up in flames with her.

She stopped in front of him, exasperation—and maybe a little of something else—turning her cheeks pink. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." Because she had no business being in anon-secure location until they knew for sure that Wolczyk had given up on her being in Fort Worth and reported that misinformation back to Fane.

"I work here."

"Oh really?" He asked, letting some of his own frustration—about her safety and otherwise—leak into his tone. "Are you picking up some extra hours in the gym? Looking for a sparring partner?"

There is was. That spark of something extra chipping away at her frozen exterior. But the moment he spotted it, she managed to transform her features into that damned frosty mask of hers that didn't give away a thing about the woman hiding behind it. Instead of fiery, her gaze turned bored. Instead of a heated flush in her cheeks, she lifted her chin a few haughty inches. Tamara was gone and the impenetrable ice queen back in place.

Without another word, she turned and sauntered over to the ring where the fighter in the green shorts was downing a bottle of water.

"Bryson." The smile she gave him was anything but glacial. It was downright friendly. "You helped out Bianca with the engagement party right?"

The fighter nodded his head, a cocky grin on his face like he even stood a chance. "Yeah, I took the centerpieces over for her."

"Did you get anyone to help you carry it out?" Tamara asked.

Isaac knew exactly where she was going with this. Looked like someone had been busy while under lockdown in the B-Squad offices. He had to admire her determination to be in control of her own destiny, even as he realized it was going to make keeping her safe that much harder.

"Nah." The fighter flexed like only an idiot twenty-year-old did in front of a hot chick. "I can carry a lot more than a couple of boxes. If it wasn't for forgetting to take my keys out of my pocket before I went outside I would've been able to get them into the car on my own too."

Tamara tensed. It was just the slightest tightness in her jaw and it disappeared almost immediately, but he caught it. The urge to pounce on the kid and shake him until all the details rolled out had Isaac by the balls, but he resisted. Tamara was working her source like a pro. If he didn't know better, he'd think she was a B-Squad agent instead of the office manager.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Dude got out of a Prius and held the boxes while I got my keys out." The utterly-clueless-and-in-need-of-a- smack-to-the-head Bryson said. "They didn't get messed up did they?"

"No." Tamara patted the fighter's forearm.