Elle James - Navy SEAL Newlywed

“Perfect,” Tracie smiled. “We’ll take it.”

Rip grinned at the manager. “She can’t wait to get me alone.” He held up her left hand, displaying the diamond ring and wedding band on her finger. Then he held up his left hand, displaying a matching wedding band. “Newlyweds.”

The manager smiled and handed them two key cards. “Congratulations.”

“Let’s wait to get the luggage until we’ve seen the room,” Tracie said, with a flirty bat of her eyelashes.

Though Rip knew it was all part of the act, it didn’t stop his pulse from leaping and his blood from thrumming hot through his veins. They stepped into the elevator. Before the door closed, Rip pulled Tracie into his arms and kissed her soundly.

The elevator doors slid shut and Tracie pushed him away, straightening her dress unnecessarily, her hands shaking. “We don’t want to look overeager.”

“Don’t you think newlyweds are anxious to get to their hotel room?”

Tracie shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, never having been a newlywed.” Her words were tight and it was as if a shutter descended over her green eyes.

“Well, I guess that answers one question.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

He smiled, liking that he’d shaken her with his kiss. “You’ve never been married. So you’re not married now.”

Turning her back to him, she said, “What does it matter?”

“I would think it would matter a little since we just kissed.”

“All part of our cover. It didn’t mean anything.”

“If you were married, wouldn’t you hope that your husband would be a little jealous of the man kissing his wife?”

“I would hope he’d understand it’s part of the job. Not that I’m getting married anytime soon.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not convinced marriage is all that great.”

Having been a SEAL for seven years, Rip had much the same perspective, though he’d never voiced his opinion on the institution. Tracie made him reconsider his own stand on matrimony. “I think marriage is okay for some.”

Tracie’s lips twisted as she glanced up at him. “But not you?”

He countered with raised brows. “Or you?”

“Marriage is hard enough when the two parties involved live under the same roof all year long. My jobs in the FBI and now on Hank’s team have kept me moving. I don’t have the time or the inclination to set down roots.”

The door opened on the seventh floor. Rip took the lead, turning toward the stairwell instead of the room the hotel manager had assigned them. Tracie was right behind him.

He hurried down the stairs checking for security cameras. He’d seen one in the hallway on the seventh floor, but not in the stairwell. One floor down, he opened the door.

Movement captured his attention. Two men were entering the stairwell at the opposite end of the long corridor. The last one through looked over his shoulder at Rip and Tracie before shoving the guy in front of him the rest of the way through the door and crowding in behind him.

“Damn.” Tracie ducked past Rip and ran for room 627. The doorjamb was splintered and the door stood ajar. Tracie pulled a pistol from her purse and shouldered her way inside, gun pointed.

Rip dragged the HK .40 from the holster beneath his shirt and rushed in after Tracie.

“Franks is dead.” Tracie turned toward him. “Whoever did it got away.”

“The two in the stairwell.” Rip ran back to the stairwell. He took the steps two at a time, jumping over the railing as the staircase made a turn. He landed and repeated the process until he hit the ground floor where he burst through the doorway. As dark sedan rushed by, one of its windows lowered and the barrel of a pistol jutted out.

Rip threw himself to the ground as the sharp report of gunfire blasted the air. He rolled beneath a truck and out the other side, jumping to his feet. Another shot shattered the truck’s passenger window.

Hunkered low with the body of the truck between him and the fleeing vehicle, Rip sucked in a breath and dared to poke his head over the top of the hood, praying he’d have enough time to get a fix on the license plate of the sedan. Already, it was too far away and getting farther.

Rip ran across the grass, cut through a stand of trees and made it to the street as the getaway vehicle turned onto the main road.

He hammered his pistol’s grip into the driver’s side window, cracking the glass.

The driver cursed, and the vehicle slowed for a second. Tires squealing, it leaped across the crowded roadway, and three other vehicles crashed into each other as the drivers slammed on their brakes.

With the pileup blocking Rip, the killers got away.

Farther away from Tracie and the scene of the crime than he felt comfortable with, Rip jogged back to the hotel, and raced up the six flights of stairs.

Tracie was still in room 627 with the dead DEA supervisor.

Rip nudged the door open with his foot, breathing hard, his shirt torn and dirty.

“What happened?” Tracie asked.

“They got away.” Rip kicked the door closed behind him, careful not to touch anything. “Have you called the police?”

She shook her head and held up gloved hands. “No. And I’ve been careful not to leave prints on anything. We can’t blow our cover. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

“What about the surveillance video for this floor?”

“I’ll get Hank to work on that. Right now, we need to find any information that Greer might have left for us.” She slapped a pair of latex gloves in his hands.

Rip pulled on the gloves and glanced around the hotel room. Drawers littered the floor, a small suitcase lay upside down beside the drawers, clothes were strewn around the room as if someone had gone through them in a hurry. Pillows had been tossed off the bed and the mattress lay at an awkward angle, the sheets in a rumpled heap beside the dead man.

“The room’s been tossed. If there was anything to be found, don’t you think the killers would have gotten to it first?” Rip asked.

He glanced at the door. Not only had the killers splintered the frame, the chain lock had been ripped out of the door itself.

“The chain on the door was torn off. The agent knew someone might try to get to him.” Tracie checked the closet, the empty room safe and behind the dresser. “Nothing.”

Rip found a set of keys beneath the corner of the bed. “Think he might have left something in his vehicle?”

“We can check, but we better make it quick. It won’t be long before someone sees the broken door and discovers the body. We don’t want to be around when the police get here.”

Rip nodded. They couldn’t afford to be tied up answering questions for the police. Their fake documents would only hold up until authorities tracked down their real identities. “Did Hank have the access to erase our fingerprints from the FBI and military databases?”

“As far as I know, he removed us from all grids.”

A sense of loss washed over Rip. His identity had been erased from the military system. He’d always been proud of his connection with the SEALs. Having been removed from the system made him feel even more disconnected than his fake death.

Rip squared his shoulders. He didn’t have time to grieve his own death. Palming the car keys, he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Leading the way, Rip took the staircase down to the ground level.

Tracie followed more slowly in her high heels, listening for others entering the stairwell or raising the alarm about a killing in the hotel.

So far, nothing had gone according to plan, which was right on par for the life of an FBI agent, or a Covert Cowboys, Inc. operative for that matter. Rarely did she have complete control over what happened, but she’d rather be in the position of giving the orders than taking them. She frowned at Rip’s back.