Yoshi nodded and Peter laughed. Diya didn’t allow herself to even smile. This wasn’t over yet. There were several more pieces to put into place before she had her revenge. Letting herself get too confident would be a foolish, dangerous move. She wouldn’t put her family’s vengeance at risk by becoming complacent. She wouldn’t relax until this was over.
Chapter 22
Sam outlined all she’d found to Chad, Zach, Logan, and Ernie. As Sam initially suspected, she linked Lazarus Alonzo to the attacks on her. The evidence she’d found so far wasn’t overwhelming, but he’d left small traces of his activity here and there. There’d been a couple of chat room connections between himself and one of the mercenaries, and an email to an old account of Alonzo’s.
Logan had to hide his shock that Sam was BillieBurke. Hell, he studied BillieBurke’s work in some of the computer forensics courses he’d taken in the military. She was a legend. An absolutely brilliant, real-life superhero, with the mask to match.
No one had been able to uncover her identity except the handful of federal agents who worked with her. In fact, no one ever even confirmed her gender. Some surmised she was a woman, while others contended BillieBurke was a man. Leave it to the woman he loved to be this secret superhero.
Well, damn. Loved.
Logan shook his head and grinned. Yeah. He loved her. Sam. BillieBurke. He shook his head again.
Chad laughed and tossed a spoon across the table to get Logan’s attention. “Get over it. She’s BillieBurke. Really, did you expect any less?”
“No, I guess I didn’t,” he said and watched Sam duck her head. She blushed, but he grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight as he let out another big burst of laughter. He felt fantastic. “I’m dating BillieBurke.”
Sam smiled at him and shrugged but he could tell she was pleased with his reaction. For the first time in a long time, he was looking forward to whatever the future held. They’d get through this. They would keep her safe. And she’d help him get through his PTSI and learn to live with it, to cope. They would build a life together.
“All right, Sam, what did you find?” Zach’s question drew Logan’s focus back to the problem at hand.
“It’s thin so far, but I’ve found threads in a chat room that show our mercenaries in the same place as Lorenzo Alonzo. And, I’ve tracked money paid to one of the men back to a cover company linked to Alonzo. I don’t know if it would be enough for them to arrest him, but it points us in the right direction.”
“That’s the human trafficker you took down?” Logan asked Sam.
“Yeah.” Her answer was short and everyone was quiet for a minute as they processed this news.
Logan spoke up first. “Can you find out where he is now?”
Sam shook her head. “No. I haven’t been able to find anything. No trace of him.”
“I can get this information to my friends at the FBI,” Chad said. “They’ll take it seriously if he’s coming after Sam. They’ll do what they can.”
“But we don’t know if that will be enough,” Logan said. The others agreed and Logan caught Sam’s gaze. She looked frightened and exhausted.
“All right. Let’s get some sleep and see if we can track this guy down in the morning,” Chad said.
Logan would normally have plowed on, without sleep or thoughts of rest. He’d take a combat nap here or there and keep going, but he could see Sam had reached a breaking point. Maybe she hadn’t been kidding when she said she couldn’t sleep without him in the house. He’d been an ass since she’d dragged him in.
He said a quick goodnight to everyone and tugged Sam to her feet.
“Together?” Sam closed her eyes, flinching as she did so.
Logan laughed, putting his arm around her shoulders and walking up the stairs with her. He leaned down to her ear. “Yup, that was out loud, Sam.” He couldn’t stop laughing as she nodded her head, eyes still closed.
“I’ll fix it someday. There must be some way to train myself to keep my mouth shut.” No sooner had she said the words than a yawn took over and she covered her mouth.
Sam froze at the top of the stairs, eyes on the closed door to the master bedroom and what Logan knew lay inside: the bathroom where the attack happened.
“The guys moved my things into the guest bedroom. I’m staying in there for now.” She nodded to the room on the left and the small bathroom off of it. “I keep telling myself, the men are gone. The blood is gone. No one here can hurt me. It works. Sometimes. But, when I put my hand on the knob to go in there, I just can’t do it.”
He nodded and walked with her into the guest room.
Logan’s arms came around her and Sam’s body responded instantly, but she couldn’t will away the anxiety she felt. He would see her cuts, the stitches. He would see the ugly markings left on her that would never go away. The plastic surgeon said the scars would fade and be thinner and lighter over time, but that wouldn’t happen right away. For now, there was an ugly reminder of what had happened, right on her breasts.
“Hey,” Logan said, tipping her chin up to allow him to meet her eyes. “I will never, ever see any of you as ugly. You’re beautiful to me, inside and out, Sam. Nothing will ever change that.”
Sam felt a tear fall down her cheek despite her efforts to keep them at bay. She wanted so much to believe him but how could he not look at the cuts and think them anything but ugly and sickening?
“I’ll show you,” he said softly, and Sam might have wondered if she’d spoken the words aloud or he had simply guessed what she’d been thinking. But, he didn’t give her time to think again. He pressed his lips to her neck, just below her ear and she heard a soft moan fall from her mouth. The feel of his lips on her, of his tongue as he traced a path down to her collar bone, melted her concerns.
Sam let her head fall back as he nipped and licked and teased and caressed. Her body heated and she felt her breath come in pants. The tingling his kisses sent through her wasn’t like what she’d felt before with other men. He made her feel so much more. Want so much more.
She leaned her body into his, pressing her stomach and thighs against him, feeling the rock-hard erection that proved he had told her the truth. He did want her.
She heard his groan as she rocked her hips into him and he tore his mouth from her neck. He captured her mouth and delved into it with a hot and needy tongue as he pressed her back to the bed. How he managed to be both so gentle and so powerful at once, she would never know. He laid her down on the bed and stretched out next to her.
“Sam,” he said in a whisper. It was prayer and plea, want and need. It was asking permission and telling her he was going to please her in every way imaginable. All of it, in one drawn out syllable.
“Yes,” she hissed on an exhaled breath. It was a grant of permission, a plea to never stop. It was prayer and hope and her heart swelling to allow him in, completely.
Logan’s hands played over the shirt covering her breasts, gently tickling and teasing. Sam felt a moment of panic and her hands came to his wrists, grasping them tightly. Logan came up onto one arm and looked into her eyes.
“You never need to hide anything from me, Samantha. Never.”