I blink through the water. “You have to condition or it will be a mess all day.”
Grinning down at me, he kisses me quick. “I’ll remember that.”
While he’s working conditioner through my hair, I grab a washcloth and start washing myself when he pushes me back under the water to rinse my hair again. Turning me again, his arm snakes around my front, pulling my back into his chest and he takes my washcloth away to wash between my legs. I’m still sensitive from earlier, I can’t help but close my eyes and lean my head back against his shoulder.
He kisses my temple and says, “Go back to bed, babe. Get some more sleep.”
I turn to him and put my arms around his waist and up his back fitting myself to him. Up on my tiptoes, I kiss him.
Getting out, I towel off, squeezing as much water out of my hair as I can. I go to my closet to grab one of Jude’s t-shirt’s off the top of his ever-exploding bag on the floor and head straight back to bed. Mia snuggles into me, wondering why I would get up so early to begin with and I barely hear the water turn off. Minutes later I feel Jude’s hand under the covers sliding up the side of my leg to land on my bare ass and he gives me a squeeze.
With his lips on my forehead and he murmurs, “I’m setting the alarm. Call me when you get up.”
“Have a good day,” I mumble and snuggle in deeper, my wet hair strewn all over the pillow.
“You too. Your Uncle Nic will be here in a few. I’ll wait for him before I leave.” He leans in to kiss me again.
“Mmm,” I mumble as my very relaxed body starts to find sleep again.
“It’s not a hunch anymore, man. This is Harper. We’ve got an ID on him from the airport attendant at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City. The plane was booked last night to fly into Fremont Municipal first thing this morning. Our Agents up there had all flights in the area tagged to anywhere in our vicinity—the red flag went up immediately,” Mac says into my ear as I’m driving into the office. “We knew last night there was a plane booked from the Lake Michigan area and thought it was a shot in the dark, but it looks like it’s turning out to be Harper making his way home.”
“Anyone with him?” I return.
“Yeah, his right-hand man. We still don’t know where they were staying, but we’ll find out soon enough. They took off in a private charter an hour ago. They should be landing at Fremont in forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll be to you in five, we should have plenty of time, but I want to be there when that motherfucker gets off the plane,” I bite. This moment has been in the back of my mind for the last two weeks.
“Calm down, Ortiz. I know you can’t think of anything besides smashing his face in, but we’ve got another situation to deal with first.”
“What?”
“Megan Harper. Her tail is reporting that she’s packing up her SUV. We’ve got a tracker on her car, so we’ll know where she is and the ping on her phone will show, too. An unmarked car is ready to follow and we’ll monitor her in the wire room, but man, it looks like she could be meeting up with her husband for the first time in three weeks.”
“What the fuck?” We have all of her phones tapped and a ping order to show the coordinate location. How did we miss their communication? Unless they had backup plans, which means Megan Harper would have been aware something like this could happen and was prepared for it. Which also means Megan Harper knows more than we thought.
“I know, man. That woman puts on a good front. But this cannot be a coincidence that she’s packing up when he’s heading south. I remember that woman from the raid. I’m gonna need another cup of coffee to deal with her.” He sighs, searching for patience.
The rage inside me just ignited. That bitch knew what she was doing calling Gabby, fed the information to her jackass husband knowing he would go after her with a physical and verbal warning. For the first time in my life, I’m feeling like I could beat the shit out of a woman.
“I’m almost there. Be ready to go, I’m not in the mood to waste time this morning.”
“There’s more,” Mac goes on. “Her tail is almost one hundred percent sure she’s packing her kids up with her. We’re checking the flight plan at Fremont, but it looks like they could be getting ready to bolt. I’ll be out front waiting, we should be getting word any minute if that plane has plans to move.”
I get to the office, Mac swings in and we gun it west, alerting highway patrol who we are so they won’t stop us. We make the normally short thirty-minute drive in twenty, finding out on the way that Megan does have her kids with her, which throws a whole other dimension into our ops plan. Child Protective Services has been put on-call in case the children need to be taken into protective custody. We have four undercover surveillance units located inside the terminal waiting for Megan and her kids to arrive, with additional units placed in the parking lot and tarmac. The Omaha SWAT team is the closest unit to respond and have an armored vehicle ready to move onto the tarmac if Harper doesn’t cooperate by exiting the aircraft. Since Fremont is a small department, a mass of Omaha PD is providing backup, waiting a half-mile away when we start taking them into custody.
“From what we can tell on the tracker, Mrs. Harper has taken a wrong turn but has rerouted and is heading back this way. The flight plan is to refuel here and head straight west to the Outer Banks. The asshole seems to like water, I’m sure being landlocked in the Midwest was torture for him,” our Group Supervisor informs us.
We’re in the backroom of the terminal of the Fremont Municipal Airport, a tiny airstrip right on the edge of town. The Falcon 10, a small private lightweight jet that Harper chartered, should be here in fifteen minutes. The plan is to get Megan and her kids out of the way before Harper’s plane lands.
“As soon as the wife and kids enter the terminal we will quietly, for the kids’ sake, escort them into this room. The pilot should exit the plane since they’re refueling, but if he doesn’t, the tower will radio to him that there is an issue with the flight plan to get him out. If Harper continues to be the fuckwad he’s proven to be by not getting off to help his wife with the kids and bags, we’ll send in SWAT, demand over the speakers that they exit the aircraft. If that doesn’t work, we’ll be forced to smoke him out,” he goes on to lay out the operational plan.
Hopefully this will be over in thirty to forty-five minutes and we will have three more in custody, but more importantly, Gabby will be safe again. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, pull it out and see Gabrielle listed across the screen. Moving away from the group, slide my thumb across and answer. “Sugar.”
“Good morning … again,” she responds and I can hear her smile. “I just woke up.”
“That’s good, Gabby. I’m glad you got back to sleep.”
“What are you doing? You left earlier than normal, or what I’m guessing is normal for you, since you’ve been … well … here anyway,” she asks, stumbling over her words again.
“We have something going on this morning that I needed to get in for. Is Nic still there?”
“No, he had to get to a building site, Tia just got here. I feel so bad about putting everyone out all the time. I hope this ends soon.”