Page 7 of Fallen Hero

Five. Freaking. Days.

Shit.

I blew out a frustrated breath but couldn’t deny that frustration was mingled with a fair amount of belly flutters.

Before I closed the text thread, I did another quick scan of the messages.

Fucking Atlanta.

Thankfully, the burn of her betrayal won out and singed those stupid butterflies.

I also had a voicemail notification. I didn’t have to look to know who it was from.

Tomorrow. I’d deal with the voicemail and Atlanta and whatever trouble she’d caused tomorrow. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late to call Mason and tell him not to come. Five days was a long time, but if I was lucky, I could still stop him before he rallied the troops.

I knew my hope was for naught, and that was proved true when the knock on the door came.

No, not a knock—banging.

Shit.

Chapter Two

“Jesus, brother, you planning on breakin’ down the door with your knuckles?” my teammate Fallon Harris quipped from beside me, as I continued to bang on the unanswered hotel door.

Unanswered seemed to be a theme with Calista Ventura.

I stopped banging on the door, exhaled through my teeth, and tried to pull up my nonexistent patience.

“Seriously,” Pete, my other teammate, grumbled from his position on the opposite side of me. “Give her a minute.”

I’d already given her five fucking days to answer. Waiting another minute might shove me right over the edge.

Logically, I knew I had no right to be pissed. I had no claim over the woman. I’d only spent a couple of hours in her presence, and during that time, conversation was scarce. Beyond that we’d shared eight texts, and I’d left one unreturned voicemail.

So maybe I did have a logical reason to be pissed. She’d requested backup, then didn’t pick up her phone when I called—like I said I would—then taking that a step further, she’d disconnected her number.

So, yeah, fuck yeah, I was pissed. Not only because she’d ghosted me, but in an effort to track her ass down, I had to call CIA Officer Tom Washington. A man who’d proven to be shady and underhanded. Not that there were many spooks who weren’t shady and underhanded. It was just that Tom Washington was more so. I didn’t trust the man, which meant I had to play telephone tag with Shepherd Drexel, our hacker, to confirm Tom’s intel. Something else that pissed me off.

Shep was the best at what he did, but when he felt like being a pain in the ass, he gave you the runaround before he answered a call.

By the time we had confirmation, I was worried something had happened to Calista. Which necessitated another unpleasant call to Tom, who told me not to worry about the disconnected number, that this was normal operating procedure with Calista, and she’d check in when she had time.

For a man who, a few weeks ago, went all out to get my team to Mexico to rescue her from a cartel before she was trafficked, his lack of concern for her in the present told me not only was he shady and underhanded, he was also a motherfucker.

I lifted my hand to resume pounding when the door flew open.

And there she was. Or at least, there was a woman who closely resembled the Calista I remembered, only this version of the woman was not in dirty jeans and a T-shirt. She was in a clingy little black dress that hit mid-thigh and showed a goodly amount of cleavage. But it wasn’t her perfect tits that had my attention, or her long-ass legs that gave a man unhealthy ideas. It was her glossy blonde hair that was swept up, exposing an elegant neck I had the sudden urge to taste.

“About fucking time,” I snarled, and pushed inside.

Calista wobbled back a few steps, and that was when I noticed that on top of the sexy-as-fuck dress, she was in a pair of strappy heels that weren’t fuck-me shoes, they were something else altogether. It didn’t help that her toes were painted a soft, feminine pink, which was an in-your-face contrast to the devil red painted on her lips.

I was studiously ignoring that mouth of hers. There was only so much a man could take before he snapped.

“Mason,” she whispered. I couldn’t decipher if that whisper was shock or fear or a little of both. If I was a betting man, I’d say shock. I doubted there was much Calista feared.

Fuck me.