Chapter 9

Holy hell.He'd thought maybe hitting his head had made him hallucinate and imagine he'd been thoroughly kissed by his fantasy woman. But she really was here. In the flesh. The guys could see her, and he had blood on his beard.

With the distraction his teammates provided, Mike now looked his fill at the cunning angel while using the wet wipe Alvero had given him to clean himself up. She was even more compelling than he remembered from the glimpse he'd gotten of her at the gym. She was a smoking ten. And her kiss… Well, shit. As well as her kickass demeanor, that combustible buss had added to her allure. But…

Why was there always a but?

She was lying to him.

Not about Mellie and Cameron. Mike could hear the truth in what she'd said about them. But in almost everything else she'd prevaricated, skirted questions, and outright lied.

Elle Picket.Sure. And she didn't even pretend to be repentant about giving him a clearly fake name. Cool under fire was more how Mike would describe her as he'd asked questions, and she'd easily deflected. So…

Undercover cop? Bounty hunter? Operative with a government agency? Private dick? The list could go on and on, but Mike figured that until the intriguing mind and cock tease wanted her intel known, he wouldn't get anything out of her.

Still, that didn't mean he wouldn't dig around in her brain for everything else he wanted to know. He watched her carefully. She was a cool one.

She grimaced as Alvero Deluthe arrived, ordering her to sit on Mike's side running board while he squatted to clean the gravel out of her chin. Mike's alarm went off again when she plunked her ass down. He pulled out his phone and killed it.

Other than the woman's facial displeasure at the goings on, she didn't flinch.

"So. Elle." Mike couldn't stop poking the blonde hornet about her fake name. "Being a server, and I use that title loosely because we both know it's bullshit, why didn't you come to me directly, or go to the police when you heard about the plot on my life?"

"Plot?" Four men on scene bellowed out the word while Welker simply nodded. Welk, quick on the uptake, had clearly already figured out that Elle had installed the surveillance. The man hadn't had a chance to run ID on the cameras he'd removed yet, but now that Welk knew who was responsible, it might make his job easier.

"Stand down," Mike groused at his angry posse. "Listen," he sighed. "There are some things I've neglected to tell the team, but because of what I assume our new friend here is going to reveal, I'll give you guys the short version." He'd come clean to the rest of the team over supper tonight.

Mike drew in a deep breath. "Mellie walked out on me and the kids about a year ago for some young dude she met at work."

Eyebrows went up, but incredulously, no one interrupted.

"Our divorce was final six months ago, and since then, the kids have reconciled with her. I speak to her on occasion when it's absolutely necessary, but…I figured we'd all moved on."

"Right. You moved on except you kept it a secret." Kyle, in particular, looked sour that he'd been kept in the dark. Mike understood. They'd formed a friendship outside of work, and Mike had kept him out of the loop.

"Yeah. Because I felt…" He looked over at Elle who was studying him closely. "…like an idiot," he admitted, not liking his dirty laundry aired. "Apparently Mellie had been seeing the asshole behind my back for several months, and I was clueless. Also, he's ten years younger than me. Which means my ego was a little…bruised."

"I get it, LT," Doug commiserated. Of all his team members, Doug had lived the toughest life, and understood keeping fucked-up-shit closed down. "Don't feel like you have to explain any further. But tell us, what's this about a plot?" Doug gave Elle the hairy eyeball out of habit that he once wasn't very trusting of the female population.

"You want to tell it, Elle?" Mike quirked his mouth, glad to have the "I'm a loser" talk done and out in the open.

The woman nodded as Alvero prepared a syringe. She made a moue of displeasure. "Stitches?" she asked him.

"Only two or three," the team medic replied.

She snorted. "Then forget the numbing shlick. If I'm going to feel one ‘little pinch' from that needle, or a few more as you sew me up, I choose door number two."

Alvero stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. "It's your face."

"It is. And I'm not vain, so don't worry. A scar won't bother me."

"Regardless," Alvero countered, his tone amused. "I'm going to make the stitches as neat as possible."

"Go for it." She thrust her chin up before she began her explanation for Mike's teammates. "Okay. Here's the skinny. I work at a bar north of here, and overheard this Melanie chick and her sperm bank discussing ways to kill a person of interest. They mentioned poison and a few other methods before determining that truck sabotage was the most efficient and undetectable path to take. It wasn't tough to find out that Mike was the intended victim once I had the woman's name and heard the rest of the conversation about a life insurance policy and a will."

Mike grimaced. He'd kind of hoped that wouldn't come out, but realized it was germane to the story. To give them credit, not one of his buddies gave him shit about it. At least for now.

"You're the one who put up the cameras on Mike's property, and tagged his truck," Welker stated, getting back to facts.

The rest of Mike's friends and teammates stood there taking it all in, their heads on a swivel between Mike and the captivating conundrum.

"Yup. That was me." Again, no apologies from Elle, just a barely detectable wince once Alvero got started with his needle and thread.

"Which brings us back to my question," Mike gruffed, staying put even though he wanted to hold her hand in the worst way while Alvero fixed her up. "Why did you keep the info from me and the local authorities?"

Elle looked pained for a moment, but not physically. She was clearly determining how much she should reveal.

He'd give her that. Mike was intrigued enough to relish pulling everything from her…eventually.

"There's a lot I can't tell you," she began, "but suffice to say, I'm working an…op right now, and I'm not at liberty to divulge any details regarding my role, who I work for, or what I'm doing in Maine. Therefore, if I'd brought the authorities in, or contacted you to give you deets regarding your ex's scheme, I would have been hard pressed to keep my anonymity, and believe me, a lot of shpit is riding on me staying undercover."

She looked pretty satisfied with her explanation, and with the snip of Alvero's scissors signaling he'd completed his face-fixer-upper.

"I've got some of your story figured out," Welker taunted, as everyone else listened. "The cameras are definitely federal issue." He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting to see if she'd offer up anything else.

Instead, she pointed a finger at him. "Correct. And they need to go back up." She surprised them all with her edict.

When Welker opened his mouth to rebut, she gave him an authoritative look and cut him off.

"If you want, I'll give you—all of you— access to the camera feed so there'll be more than just my eyes keeping watch."

Welker's orbs widened. "You'd do that?"

"Uh, duh," she responded smartly. "Didn't we just ascertain that this is about keeping your LT safe and above ground?"

"Okay. Okay," Mike intervened before the two continued down a "who cares about Mike's ass, most" road. "Now we all know that my ex wants me dead so she can collect, and that she and her boyfriend already succeeded in cutting my brake lines?—"

"Are you shitting me?" This time it was Cisco piping up.

That's right. Mike hadn't said anything about the current sabotage he'd uncovered before his tussle with Elle.

Cisco didn't wait for an answer, but frowned and dropped to the ground, propelling himself under Mike's truck.

"Fuck!"

They all heard that, loud and clear.

"Exactly," Elle responded with a smirk as Cisco's face became visible again. "So, you all agree we have a problem here. And depending on Mike's response to what I ask him next, I have a plan."

"Of course you do," Mike responded wryly, then grumbled to Cisco. "I can easily fix the damage." Although that wasn't pertinent at the moment.

"Uh, huh. Because I'm that kind of girl." She ignored his "fixing" comment, and tipped her head as if in challenge.

Was she bragging? Mike doubted it.

He waited for her next move, but he didn't have to like or follow anything she proposed. He wasn't sure he liked divulging anything more to the spitfire than she already knew. Still, he needed this problem of Melanie gone so he could concentrate on…

Yup. He really wanted to revisit the hot-as-hell kiss he'd shared with this paradox of a woman; see if she was just playing him, or if she'd shared the zinging electricity that had been lighting up Mike's viscera since they'd meshed mouths.

He made up his mind, quickly. "Okay. Shoot. What's your question?"

Elle didn't waste a second. "How do you think the pernicious-pair knew about your will and your life insurance policies?" Before he could answer, she continued. "And here's an even tougher one; how did they know where your truck would be this weekend? When I put my tracker in place, I checked, and there weren't any others."

Damn.All good queries, and Mike was afraid he knew the answers.

His voice, when it emerged, sounded rough. "I believe that… Shit. The kids still trust Mellie," he began. "A few weeks ago, I found out they'd let her in the house to ‘collect a few more of her things', even though she'd already taken everything that belonged to her. I'm assuming, now that I know what she's been espousing, that she snuck into my office and went through my files. It wouldn't have been hard to find my will or my policies."

"That sucks," Kyle growled.

"It does," Mike agreed. "I didn't think she had it in her, but I'll make sure she knows she's not welcome in my house again." The next bit of info was more difficult to spit out. "I also think she's probably been finessing the kids into revealing any plans I have to be away from the house. Like being here for drills this weekend."

"That's kind of what I figured," Elle told him. "Which isn't a dis to your kids, Mike. She is their mother."

Why did Mike's opinion of the woman suddenly rise to another level when she let his children off the hook? Well, hell. Because he loved his kids, and he loved him some empathy.

"But with your offspring being so trusting of her, my idea will definitely work," she went on, "and we'll catch the dirty-duo."

"What do you have in mind?" Mike grunted.

"Okay." She rubbed her hands together. "This is going to be as easy as luring rats to pizza." She grinned. "Here it is. We plan a bogus, full day hike someplace nearby, and let your kids know well in advance. You make sure they've had a couple visits with her to fill her in, then, bam! Instead of hiking, we hide out and catch your ex and her booty-call in the act of desecrating your truck."

Mike liked the idea…and he didn't. If he caught the pair sabotaging his vehicle and pressed charges, then Mellie would most likely go to jail for a long time for attempted murder. How would that make him look in the eyes of his kids? That he'd put their mother behind bars? On a purely intellectual level they'd understand that Mellie had plotted to kill him, but on an emotional level, they'd be devastated if their mother was incarcerated.

He shook his head. "It makes sense, but…"

"But you don't want your ex going to jail, possibly scarring your kids for life," Doug put in, astutely.

"Got it in one," Mike grunted.

"Okay. What if…?" Now Kyle got a sly look on his face. "What if we scare the shit out of them instead? We all know Mellie," he looked around and received nods from everyone but Elle. "No offense or anything Mike, but she's always been a little self-serving, so we know she'll pick the avenue that's most advantageous to her. If we set up a sting like Elle suggested, but instead of turning the pair in, we tie them up, then posture like we're going to do away with them for their misdeeds, they'll back off. Especially after we make very convincing noise about how we're going to hide their bodies where no one will ever find them."

"And then?" Mike grunted, not sure what Kyle was getting at.

"After scaring the crap out of them, we'll give Melanie a few options. They can either kiss their asses goodbye, be turned over to the police and be convicted of attempted murder, or…,"here he paused gleefully, "they can promise to back off and leave you the fuck alone, and we'll do the same with them."

"And why would they agree to that?" Elle asked, clearly skeptical.

"Because not only will Mike, at that point, tell them he's changed his paperwork so Mel's no longer a beneficiary to anything, but as added incentive, with all the witnesses—us—who are aware of her and her boyfriend's perfidy, he'll let her know if so much as a hair on his head is harmed in the future, they'll both disappear off the face of the earth completely—complements of his team."

Mike tugged on his beard, which, yes, was still crusty with dried blood despite the wet-wipe. "It could work. Mellie's never been the intrepid sort to risk her ass." Unlike the woman whose green gaze had barely left his since they'd had their tussle. He knew she wouldn't blink at any threat aimed her way.

Elle cleared her throat. "But she knows all of you pretty well, doesn't she?" she asked the group. "Which means she knows you're all goodie-two-shoes; boy scouts who stick pretty closely to society's rules."

The guys all looked a little sheepish, because, yeah. They all respected the law, and killing Mellie wouldn't just be a stretch, it would be a hell no in their book, and his ex would know that.

"Right," Mike agreed. "She's not going to buy that we're a threat."

The eyes which had mesmerized Mike suddenly glinted with a joyous kind of evil that had his heart flip-flopping in his chest.

"Me, on the other hand?" Elle smirked. "I'm a wildcard. So if I come off as the lunatic bitch with, let's say, a knife, who's protecting her new…boyfriend," her smile turned up in wattage as she pursed her lips and sent a puckered kiss Mike's way, "she'll be pooping her panties by the end of our confrontation."

"I like it," Welker stated, laughing. "But truthfully? I think once Mel finds out she's off a dearly-departed-Mike's gravy-train, she'll give up her plot and slink back into obscurity. That being said, however, I'm all for seeing her face when she not only finds out Mike's got a hot girlfriend—Uh, sorry. Not PC. A lovely lady of interest—but finds out her replacement is a bit on the cray-cray side."

"Mike?" Elle asked, her brows raised as she attempted to tamp down her amusement. "What do you say, sweet cheeks? You wanna shack up?"

Mike looked around at his friends who were trying hard not to roar with laughter. They knew him well enough that they fully expected to see drool oozing out from one corner of his mouth.

But aside from the shit he'd take if he agreed to Elle's proposal, was he on board with accepting the mysterious woman's offer?

Hell yes.

But, dammit, he wanted her proposal to be real. He wanted this woman in his bed and underneath him…hell, on top of him if that's what she liked, until he could work her out of his system.

That clearly wasn't what she'd put on the table, though. Or was it? He couldn't get a read on her, and that ramped up his fascination and his cock another degree.

Mike forced his libido back down, with difficulty, making a snap decision.

With as much dispassion as he could muster, he gave his answer.

"Sounds like a plan."