Chapter Eleven
Anton Devast inclined his head. “And then there was nothing left.” He’d been watching the clock on the stark, white interrogation room wall. If Carl had followed his orders, if he’d stayed on the schedule Devast had made for the detonations, then the float graveyard had just blown up in New Orleans.
The whole block would be a wreck.
His chaos. His havoc.
Mercer had his phone out. He was pulling the pretty blonde from the room. Demanding to know the status—
The door shut behind Mercer.
Anton exhaled slowly. It wasn’t the revenge he’d wanted.
But it would have to do.
* * *
“TINA!”
Drew wiped the blood from his eye as he leaped to his feet. His clothes were singed, blisters covered his arms and— Where was Tina?
She’d been in front of him before the last detonation. He’d tried to reach for her, but the blast had torn her away from him.
His gaze searched to the left. The right. Smoke billowed all around him. Tina couldn’t stay in this smoke. It would hurt her.
Maybe that’s why she wasn’t calling back to him. Maybe she was having another attack. The smoke had set it off before, on that runway, and maybe—
“D-Drew...” Just a whisper; a strangled gasp that he heard above the flames.
That gasp was the sweetest sound to his ears. It meant that she was alive.
He ran to her, following that gasp. She was on the ground, struggling to sit up. He shoved his hand into the hidden pocket on his vest and pulled out her inhaler. “Easy, Doc, I’ve got you.”
Always.
She took the inhaler. Her lashes lifted so that her eyes met his.
The fire was still spreading, surging higher and higher. Sirens wailed in the distance.
“I have to get you out of here.” He scooped her up into his arms. It wasn’t about a mission or priorities. He didn’t think it ever had been. It was only about her.
Now, she truly was the only good thing left in his life.
He looked up. The other agent was there—the man who’d come up behind the building and taken out most of Devast’s men. Cooper Marshall. Drew knew the guy by reputation, but had never worked with him. Cooper’s blond hair stuck to his temples, slick with sweat. He had a gun in his left hand. “Get her out,” Cooper barked. “I’ll make sure we’re clear.”
And that no more of Devast’s men had survived to attack again.
Drew held tight to Tina as he raced away from the scene. He’d gotten her out of that inferno. She was in his arms. Safe.
When he’d learned about his sisters—
No.
Drew immediately slammed the door on that thought. Not now. Can’t think of them now. He was barely holding together as it was.
He had to protect Tina first.
Tina, then—
Paige had wanted to stay with me.
His back teeth ground together. His eyes burned.
His arms clung even harder to Tina. He kept running with her cradled against him. The smoke was so thick that he could barely see as he rushed forward.
She had her medicine. She was safe. Alive.
His sisters...
I’m so sorry. He’d failed them. Let them all down. They’d died, because of him.
The sirens were wailing. He could see the lights of an ambulance approaching.
Grief threatened to choke him, but Drew kept running toward that ambulance.
Police were on the scene now. Drew caught sight of Gunner and Logan. They were keeping the local authorities back.
They’d all have to stay back until they made sure there weren’t any more bombs. The rescue teams would be held in a safe zone until the bomb squad completed their sweeps.
He had to make it to that zone.
Just a few more steps...
Made it.
The EMTs reached for Tina. They put her on a stretcher. She shoved their hands back. “Drew—”
“You’re safe.” Ash stained the hand that he slid over her cheek. “It’s over.”
His heart was leaden in his chest. His whole body seemed numb. He’d used his control in the field more times than he could count; locking his emotions away. But this was different—
My family is gone.
Tina grabbed his hand when he would have stepped back. “Wh-what...h-happened?”
The EMTs were trying to work on her, but she kept pushing them away and clinging to Drew.
“Your eyes...” Tina whispered. “They’re wrong...something...happened.”
He didn’t know what she meant about his eyes. Other than the fact that they kept burning as if they were on fire. Drew shook his head.
“T-tell me...”
His shoulders bowed. “They killed my sisters...” He should have known the exchange was too easy. His darkness, his job—it had cost Kim, Heather and Paige their lives.
“Drew!”
His head whipped up at that frantic call. That had—had just sounded like Paige.
“I can...see them,” Tina said, voice husky. Her gaze slid over Drew’s shoulder. “Not...dead.”
He spun around.
Walking through the smoke, he saw Dylan—and his friend was right beside Paige, Kim and Heather.
Alive. All of them were alive!
Drew shook his head. No, no, the explosion—
Paige ran to him. She hit his chest so hard that he took a step back. She was crying and laughing and holding on to him as tightly as she could.
Drew’s stunned gaze rose and met Dylan’s.
“Devast used devices like those collars two years ago, back in Brazil.” Dylan’s lashes flickered. “Those vics didn’t get free in time. I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen again.”
Then Kim and Heather were there. All holding him. All laughing and crying as the smoke drifted in the air.
The ambulance’s siren wailed once more. He looked back. The ambulance’s door had just slammed.
The EMTs were taking Tina away.
He tried to head toward the ambulance, but his sisters tightened their hold on him.
Drew needed to make them understand. “I have to—”
“I thought we were all going to die,” Paige whispered as the tears slid silently down her cheeks. “Is this...is this what you do?”
“You risk your life like this, all the time?” Heather’s face was stark, white. Fear lit her eyes.
He couldn’t answer her. Families weren’t supposed to know about the missions he faced.
Families also weren’t supposed to be pulled into his battles.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words rough and rumbling from deep in his throat.
Dylan pressed his hand to Kim’s shoulder. “We need to get you ladies to the hospital. We want you all checked out.”
And the scene wasn’t safe.
Tina’s ambulance had left.
Another ambulance was waiting, its back doors open. The EMTs came forward to help his sisters.
Drew caught Dylan’s arm. “Thank you.”
Dylan inclined his head. “Man, you should know I always have your back.”
He did.
The flames were burning, raging so brightly behind them. More havoc.
The group’s name had come from the destruction they left behind.
Destruction and death.
Only this time there had been survivors, too. Innocent lives had been saved.
Devast wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
No, you bastard, you didn’t know my price.
And Devast never would.
* * *
SWEET OXYGEN FLOWED into Tina’s lungs. The ambulance rolled and bounced as it raced from the scene.
Drew’s sisters had been hugging him.
She swallowed.
They’d made it out alive. The mission was finally over.
Now it was time for her to go back to the life that waited for her.
Time for him to return to his life. His missions.
They’d see each other at the EOD.
She’d remember. How could she ever forget what they’d shared?
“Miss? Miss...are you hurting?”
A tear had dropped down her cheek. Tina shook her head. There wasn’t anything the medics could do for the pain that she felt.
* * *
“WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?” Drew demanded as he slammed his hands down on the nurses’ station desk.
“Sir, you need to calm down.”
“What I need is to find the patient who was brought in! Dr. Tina Jamison! She came in by ambulance two hours ago.”
Two of the longest hours of his life. He’d stayed on scene, needing to make sure the last arm of HAVOC was truly destroyed. He’d gone in on the bomb sweeps, checked all the nearby buildings to make sure they also weren’t set to blow.
They’d used the bomb-sniffing dogs. Gone in and out—searching every possible area. They’d found two more bombs.
The bomb squad had disarmed them with seconds to spare.
Sweat coated Drew’s body as he glared at the nurse in front of him. He’d been through hell, and he needed to see his damn angel. “Where is she?”
“We have no record of a Tina Jamison, sir. She didn’t come in here. You must have the wrong hospital.”
No, he didn’t, and Drew was perilously close to tearing the place apart with his bare hands.
“They took her back to Dallas.”
He stiffened at Gunner’s voice. Drew glanced over his shoulder.
Gunner inclined his head to the right. “Come with me.”
If Gunner was giving him information on Tina, then he’d go anyplace with the guy. His steps hurried, Drew followed Gunner to a quiet corner and, once he was sure no one could overhear him, he squared off against the sharpshooter. “Why wasn’t I told about her transfer?”
“Because you were still on scene, defusing bombs.” Gunner lifted a dark brow. “Your lady is all right. You can rest easy on that. Tina was stable when she boarded the flight.”
Your lady... Gunner had always been observant. Drew nodded and tried to calm his racing heart. “You saw her then?”
“I did. Cooper was with her. Hell...” He ran a weary hand over his face as he muttered, “That guy is a ghost. I didn’t even know he was working the Devast case until I saw him jump in the ambulance with her on scene.”
Cooper had been in the ambulance?
“Seems Mercer gave him orders. Protect Dr. Jamison at all costs.”
Drew stiffened. “Mercer didn’t think I could do the job?”
Gunner’s gaze was steady. “Mercer knows that when emotions get involved, even good agents can get compromised.”
“I wouldn’t have traded her safety for anything. I was going back in after her—”
“You dying for her wouldn’t have saved her life. And we both know that was exactly what you planned to do.” Flat, cold words.
True words. He would have traded his life for Tina in an instant. Drew didn’t look away from Gunner’s direct stare.
“Does she know?” Gunner asked quietly.
He had to get on a flight to Dallas. “Know what?”
Gunner laughed. The sound caught Drew off guard. As far as he knew, the guy never laughed.
But then, as far as the rest of the agents seemed to be concerned, Drew didn’t feel, either.
Ice in my veins.
No, he had fire in his veins right then.
“Why don’t you take some friendly advice from someone who’s been where you are...?” Gunner’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Don’t just stand back and let the thing you want the most slip away from you.”
The fire burned ever hotter inside him. “But what if I’m not right for her? She needs someone—”
“Let her decide what she needs. Who she needs. Go for what you want.” Then Gunner turned away from him. “I’m going home. My wife is waiting for me.”
His wife. His very pregnant wife. Gunner had a wife who loved him—and twins on the way.
“How did you—?” Drew stopped.
Gunner glanced back at him.
“Weren’t you afraid? That what we do... Weren’t you scared that it would spill over on them?”
But, no, Gunner’s wife, Sydney, she was part of the EOD. She’d worked for years in the field. She knew all about danger. “Never mind,” Drew said, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I was more afraid,” Gunner admitted, voice low, “of trying to live my life without her.”
Drew thought of his life. The missions. One after the other. Coming home.
Being alone.
He’d looked forward to his visits to the EOD office—because I knew I would see Tina.
Is that what he wanted to happen? Would he return to only seeing Tina every few months? He’d keep his emotions sealed off and try to go on with his life without her?
He’d watch life from the outside? Day in and day out, he’d long for what he couldn’t have.
I told her there would be no going back. Because he didn’t want to go back to a life that didn’t involve Tina. He needed her far too much.
He walked down the corridor. His sisters were in a private room. Police guards made sure they weren’t disturbed.
Paige had gotten stitches. Kim and Heather had been bruised, but otherwise unharmed. They’d been very, very lucky.
He stepped into the room with them. Shut the door behind him.
No one spoke at first. Drew realized that he didn’t know what to say.
He hadn’t been in a room with the three of them since—
“I miss you,” Paige told him. A bandage was on her neck. On her arm. White bandages against her skin.
“We all miss you,” Kim added in a soft tone.
Drew swallowed. No ice.
“Why don’t you ever come home?” Heather asked him.
He didn’t have a home. Not anymore.
Paige walked toward him. The baby. The kid sister. Did she know that he’d kept every letter she’d ever sent him?
“My life...” He stopped, cleared his throat and tried again. “I never wanted it to hurt you.”
But it had. Their worlds had collided. “It was my fault that you were hurt. A very...dangerous man tracked the money I’d been sending to you.”
Paige stood in front of him. “Is he going to come after us again?”
Drew shook his head.
Her pale lips curved. “We don’t want your money, Drew. We just want you.”
And he wanted them. He wanted his family back.
He wanted a life.
Not ice.
Maybe it was time to take the risk—and to take what he wanted most.
* * *
TINA WALKED SLOWLY down the hallway of the FBI’s office in Dallas. Cooper Marshall was at her side. The guy seemed to be her constant shadow.
She was his mission—at least, for about five more feet, she was.
Tina stopped in front of Mercer’s temporary headquarters. He’d commandeered the biggest office in the place. Figured. That was Mercer. Always making friends left and right.
“Thanks, Agent Marshall,” Tina said. “I’m here, safe and sound.”
Cooper inclined his head toward her. He didn’t talk much. The agent sure seemed to be the quiet and intense type.
Once, Tina would have described Drew the exact same way. Except—
He seemed to talk plenty when they were together.
We aren’t together any longer. The mission is over. So are we.
The door opened. Mercer stood there. “Dr. Jamison, come in...”
She stepped across the threshold.
Cooper started to follow.
“Sorry, son,” Mercer said, sounding not the least bit actually sorry as he held up his hand to block Cooper, “but you don’t have clearance for this.”
Then he shut the door in Cooper’s surprised face.
Tina took a few tentative steps inside the office. She glanced around the room and she instantly realized just why Cooper didn’t have clearance.
Two other people were waiting in that office.
She knew the EOD Agent, Cale Lane. She’d patched him up a few times. And the other woman—the woman with the blond hair and the perfect face—that was Cassidy Sherridan.
Well...technically she was Cassidy Sherridan Lane now.
The blonde was Mercer’s real daughter.
She was also rushing across the room and hugging Tina. “I’m so sorry,” Cassidy told her, squeezing her tightly. “As soon as I found out, I came right away. I told Anton who I was.”
“And I damn well told you to keep her away,” Mercer growled to Cale.
“I’m not lying to my wife.” Cale was resolute. Determined. Protective.
Cassidy pulled back a bit to study Tina. “I can’t ever make this up to you.”
Tina frowned at her and shook her head. “There’s nothing to make up. You didn’t do anything to me. It was all Anton.” She glanced toward Mercer. His arms were crossed over his chest, but his gaze was on her—and it was worried. “Is his network contained? Is it over?”
“Yes.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Then we saved lives. The risk was worth it.”
“But you shouldn’t have been risked,” Cassidy whispered as she stepped back. “You should never have been in harm’s way.”
Tina had to smile at that. “And you should have been? We can’t help who we are...or who we’re not.” She felt...different standing in that room with Mercer and Cassidy. Before the nightmare of her abduction, Tina had always been a bit in awe of Mercer and all the EOD agents.
And she’d been...afraid. Of so much. Of letting her weakness hurt others. Of being caught in the cross fire once more.
“I’m not weak,” Tina said.
Mercer’s eyes narrowed.
Cale stood beside Cassidy.
“Who the hell said you were?” Now anger lit Mercer’s eyes. “If Lancaster—”
Tina shook her head. “I’m the one who thought it. Drew never said anything.” She pushed her glasses—another replacement pair because she’d lost the others in the blast down in New Orleans—up a bit on her nose. “I’ve been hiding for a long time, and I don’t want to do that anymore.” She wouldn’t stay in her labs. Wouldn’t live through the actions of others.
It was time for her to seize her own adventures.
Only, maybe these new adventures wouldn’t involve death and destruction.
“You let me hide,” she said to Mercer because she’d seen through his mask.
His jaw hardened. “I wanted you safe.”
Cassidy laughed softly. Sympathy flashed across her face. “Oh, Mercer...when you keep us safe, sometimes you keep us caged.”
Tina didn’t want to be caged anymore. Not by Mercer and not by her own fear.
The past couldn’t haunt her, and she wouldn’t spend her days afraid of what might come.
Mercer stared into Tina’s eyes. “What about Lancaster?”
He always saw so much. “He did his job. It’s over now.”
There had never been any talk of a future from him. Never any talk of emotions.
Tina knew what she felt, but as for Drew...
Maybe I couldn’t ever get past the ice.
It sure had felt as if she had, though. His torch had seemed to scorch right to her very soul.
Frantic pounding sounded on the door.
Mercer jerked his head. Cale immediately reached for Cassidy, and they slipped out a side door.
No wonder Mercer picked this office.
When they were clear, Mercer yanked open the main door. “I’m in a private meeting, what do you want?”
Cooper stood to the side. Two FBI agents—decked out in pressed suits—stared at Mercer with wide eyes. “The prisoner is seizing, sir. We’ve called medical personnel but—”
“It could be a trick,” Mercer snarled as he rushed past them.
Tina was right on his heels. There was only one “prisoner” who would have sparked this kind of reaction from Mercer.
They zigged and zagged through the halls. Then they were entering a small room that she hadn’t seen before. No windows. Only one narrow door to gain entry into that place.
Anton Devast lay slumped on a narrow cot in the room. Two agents were with him, trying to turn his head so that he could breathe.
Anton’s eyes widened when he caught sight of her. “Dead...”
No, she wasn’t.
Tina fell to her knees next to him. His breath was jerking out, his heart—beating too slowly.
She stared at his skin, noting the blue tinges and the sunken lines around his eyes and mouth.
He tried to lift his hand to reach for her.
But he didn’t have the strength.
His eyes flared. His lips trembled as he tried to speak.
Only, he couldn’t talk anymore. It was too late.
Anton Devast was still staring at Tina when he died.
* * *
IT WAS BACK to business as usual at the EOD.
Tina stepped into her lab, the white lab coat she wore a familiar comfort to her. After Devast’s death, she’d been caught up in a whirlwind. A whirlwind controlled by Mercer. Before she’d barely blinked, she’d found herself back in D.C.
With, of course, Agent Cooper Marshall at her side.
She hadn’t seen Drew again. Hadn’t heard from him.
His sisters were safe, alive— She carried the image of them embracing him in her mind.
But Drew...he just seemed to be gone.
Had he already taken another mission? Gone out on another undercover assignment? Was he in the U.S.? Already halfway around the world?
She didn’t know.
But Tina would find out.
Her hair was twisted into a small bun and her steps were sure as she searched around her lab. Less than a week. How could one life change so quickly?
Hers had, irrevocably, and there was no going back now.
She realized the full meaning of Drew’s warning to her. When he’d said there would be no going back, she should have paid more attention. Her old life had vanished, destroyed in the heat of their passion.
Her new life seemed too cold. Too sterile and stark, without him.
I miss him.
The door squeaked open behind her.
“Be with you in a second,” she said, throwing the words over her shoulder as she bent to peer into the low cabinet.
“Take your time,” a slow, drawling voice told her, the smallest hint of Mississippi deepening those words. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Drew.
She straightened slowly, then turned toward him. He stood just inside the doorway, his shoulder propped against the door frame. His eyes were on her.
And he was staring at her as if he could eat her alive.
Only fair, she was probably ogling him the same way.
“I missed you in New Orleans.” He stepped away from the door. Locked it. “And in Dallas.” He stalked toward her.
“Mercer wanted me to come back—”
“I’m not real interested in what Mercer wants.”
Neither was she. Her gaze slid over him. Tall. Dark. Deadly. That was Drew. But his eyes—they were bright.
They seemed to shine with emotion.
But Tina didn’t know if she could trust what she was seeing in his gaze.
“Don’t.” He stopped in front of her.
“Don’t what?” Why was her voice so husky?
“That’s not the way you usually look at me.”
She swallowed, not sure what he was talking about.
“Usually, you stare at me with trust. I look into your eyes, and I want to be the man you think I am.”
He was.
She made herself ask, “How am I looking at you now?”
“Like you’ve lost faith in me.” The faint lines near his mouth deepened. “Doc, don’t. I’ve been tracking you. I’ve been steps behind you all the way home.”
“I—I thought you might be on another mission.”
He nodded. “I am. The most important mission of my life.”
Oh, right. Now she understood. Another mission meant he had to be medically cleared for the field. She cleared her throat. “In light of what’s...happened...another doctor here can—”
“I don’t want another doctor.” His hands wrapped around her waist and he lifted her up. He sat her on the exam table. Put them eye-to-eye and leaned in real close to her. “You’re the one I want. The only one I want.”
“Drew—”
He kissed her.
Kissed her with passion, with need, with raw lust.
Kissed her as if he were desperate.
Kissed her as if she were his life.
She kissed him back just as fiercely. Her arms curled around his neck and she pulled him tightly to her.
She didn’t care where they were. She had him in her arms again, and she’d take this moment while she could.
It was her new philosophy. Grab life. Hold on tight.
She was sure holding tight to him.
When he licked her bottom lip, a delicious shudder slid over her.
“I love you.”
It took a minute for his growled words to sink in. When they did, Tina shook her head.
He pulled back, just a few inches, and his golden stare held hers. “I. Love. You.”
“You don’t have to say—”
“The truth? Yeah, Doc, I do.” He brushed back a lock of hair that had escaped from her bun. “I wanted to tell you in New Orleans. I wanted to tell you in Dallas. Hell, I even wanted to tell you in Lightning.”
What? No, he could not have just said that.
“I haven’t loved another woman, haven’t gotten close to anyone, the way I have with you.” His fingers curled under her jaw. “You slipped right past my walls. Made me want things...things I never thought I could have.”
If this was a dream, she had better not ever wake up. “You can have anything.”
He smiled at her. “You’re what I want.”
Her tall, dark and deadly agent was staring straight at her—and looking at Tina as if she was his world.
“I know you don’t love me,” he said, and he spoke those words with a determined pride that made her heart ache, “but give me a chance. That’s all I’m asking for. A chance to show you that we can be good together. No bombs. No danger. No threats. Just you and me. Give me the time to—”
“No.” That one word sent silence through the room.
His hand slid away from her. He swallowed. The soft sound was almost painful to hear. “Then I won’t push you anymore. I’m sorry. I—I guess I should have let you go.”
Never.
She grabbed his arm when he tried to ease away. The new stitches that she had on her neck—courtesy of that jerk Carl—pulled a bit. Tina ignored the little flash of pain. Some things were more important than pain. “I don’t need to take any kind of chance on you. I know that I love you.”
He blinked at her.
Ah, so she’d finally caught her agent by surprise. Only fair. He’d sure broken into her world and turned everything upside down.
“I loved you in New Orleans,” she told him softly. His pupils widened. The darkness fought the gold of his eyes. “I loved you in Dallas.” She smiled at him and hoped that he could see the emotion in her eyes. “And I loved you in Lightning.” She’d tried to tell him, to show him, in a million small ways.
Tina leaned forward and brushed her lips over his. She reached around him, her hands sliding over his coat.
She frowned when she felt the small bulge in his pocket.
Her brows lifted as her fingers slid inside that pocket. She touched the familiar form of an inhaler.
“I want you to always be safe,” he whispered. “I want you close to me, and I want to make sure I can help you.”
“You’ve been carrying this—”
“Since I found out what you needed. I want to be the man you need. The man who makes you smile in the morning.” A wicked glint lit his eyes. “The man who makes you moan at night.”
“You are.” Her heart was beating faster—because she was happy. The happiest she’d been in years.
It wasn’t about taking a chance on him. Wasn’t about the unknown risk of falling for a dangerous agent.
It was about what the heart wanted.
About trust.
About love.
“My sisters want to meet you,” he said as his lips lowered toward hers. “They want to meet the woman who saved them.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. Doc, you’re the bravest, strongest woman I’ve ever met. And I don’t know how I got so lucky as to find you, but I don’t ever want to let you go.”
She tilted her head back. “You don’t have to let me go.” Fair warning time. “Because I’m not going to let you go.”
“Forever?” Hope was there, in his eyes. Hope and love and happiness.
In his eyes. In his voice. On his face.
“Forever,” Tina promised. She kissed him and knew that she’d found the right man. The only man for her.
Epilogue
Bruce Mercer gazed down at the busy Washington, D.C., streets below his office. The sidewalks were full of people, and cars bustled on the pavement.
Those people lived their whole lives without realizing the danger that truly stalked the world. The danger his agents faced every single day.
“The last case was too close,” he said quietly. He’d almost lost Tina, and Cassidy’s true identity had nearly come to light.
Good thing only a dead man had heard Cassidy’s confession.
Devast had gotten intel that the man never should have possessed. The EOD tracking devices had been designed to protect the agents.
Not put them at increased risk.
Devast was dead, but the case wasn’t over. Not completely. There was a traitor in the EOD. Someone in his organization was selling out agents who were already risking their lives.
That traitor would have to be stopped.
Mercer turned away from the busy street and gazed at the agent who sat, silent and still, in the leather chair. “It was close, but you did a good job on this mission, Agent Marshall.”
Cooper Marshall inclined his head.
“Now I’ve got another case for you.” Bruce stalked slowly toward him. “I want you to find my traitor, and I want you to stop him.”
Cooper gazed up at him for a moment. “You’re sure it’s one of our own?”
“Yes.” And that just made the betrayal even harder to take. “Trust no one on this case, Marshall. A man—or woman—who will sell out his own teammates—that person will be the most dangerous enemy you’ve ever faced.”
And that enemy was in the EOD. He or she could be walking through the offices right then.
Mercer had thought he’d already cleaned house at the EOD. Every employee there should have been carefully screened.
But he’d messed up. He’d trusted the wrong person, and now his agents were paying for his mistake.
They can’t pay with their lives.
“Stop the traitor,” Mercer ordered him again. “By any means necessary.”
* * * * *
Read on for a special sneak peek of
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR,
the next installment of the
SHADOW AGENTS: GUTS & GLORY miniseries,
coming from Intrigue March 2014!
Chapter One
Cooper Marshall burst into the apartment, his gun ready even as his gaze swept the dim interior of the room that waited for him. “Lockwood!”
There was no response to his call, but the stench in the air—that unmistakable odor of death and blood—told Cooper he’d arrived too late.
Again.
Damn it.
He’d gotten his orders from the top. He’d been assigned to track down Keith Lockwood, an ex-Elite Operations Division agent. Cooper was supposed to confirm that the other man was alive and well. He’d fallen off the EOD’s radar, and that had sure raised a red flag in the mind of Cooper’s boss.
Especially since other EOD agents had recently turned up dead.
Cooper rounded a corner in the narrow hallway. The scent of blood was stronger. He headed toward what he suspected was the bedroom. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, so it was easy for him to see the body slumped on the floor just a few feet from him.
He knelt, and his gloved fingers turned the body just slightly. Cooper pulled out his penlight and shone it on the dead man’s face.
Keith Lockwood. Cooper had never worked with the man on a mission, but he’d seen Lockwood’s photos.
Lockwood’s throat had been slit. An up-close kill.
Considering that Lockwood was a former navy SEAL, the man shouldn’t have been caught off guard.
But he had been.
Because the killer isn’t your average thug off the streets.
The killer was also an agent with the EOD, and the killer was trained just as well as Lockwood had been.
No, trained better.
Because the killer had been able to get the drop on the SEAL.
Cooper’s breath eased out in a rough sigh just as a knock sounded on the front door.
The front door that Cooper had just smashed open moments before.
He leaped to his feet.
“Mr. Lockwood?” a feminine voice called out. “Mr. Lockwood...i-is everything all right?”
No, things were far from all right. The broken door should have been a dead giveaway on that point.
“It’s Gabrielle Harper!” the voice continued. “We were supposed to meet...”
His back teeth clenched. Talk about extremely bad timing. He knew Gabrielle Harper, and the trouble the woman was about to bring his way just was going to make the situation even more of a tangled mess.
Cooper holstered his weapon. He had to get out of that apartment. Before Gabrielle saw him and asked questions he couldn’t answer for her.
He rose and stalked toward the bedroom window. His footsteps were silent. After all of his training, they should be.
Gabrielle’s steps—and her high heels—tapped across the hardwood floor as she came inside the apartment.
Of course, Gabrielle wasn’t just going to wait outside. She was a reporter, no doubt on the scent of a story.
And she must have scented the blood.
She was following that scent, and if he didn’t move, fast, she’d follow it straight to him.
Cooper opened the window, then glanced down below. Three floors up. But there were bricks on the side of the building, with crevices in between them. If he held on just right, he could spider crawl his way down.
The floor in the hallway creaked as Gabrielle paused.
She should have called for help by now. At the first sign of that smashed door, Gabrielle should have dialed 9-1-1. But, with Gabrielle, what she should do and what she actually did—well, those could be very different things.
If she wasn’t careful, the woman was going to walk into real danger one day. The kind she wouldn’t be able to walk away from.
He slid through the window. Since it was after midnight, Cooper knew he’d be able to blend pretty easily with the darkness when he climbed down the backside of the building.
He’d make it out of there, undetected, provided he didn’t fall and break his neck.
He eased to the side, his feet resting against the window’s narrow ledge. He pulled the window back down and took a deep breath.
“Mr. Lockwood!” Gabrielle’s horror-filled scream broke loud and clearly through the night.
She’d found the body.
Jaw locking, Cooper made his way down the building.
Gabrielle had just stumbled into an extremely dangerous situation. Now he’d have to do some serious recon to keep her out of the cross fire.
Keep reading for an excerpt from ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVENGE by Cindi Myers.
Chapter One
Elizabeth Giardino had died on February 14. For three hundred and sixty-four days, Anne Gardener had avoided thinking about that terrible day, but on the anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, she allowed herself a few minutes of mourning. She stood in her classroom at the end of the day, surrounded by the hearts-and-lace decorations her students had made, and let the memories wash over her: Elizabeth, never Betsy or Beth, her hair streaked with brilliant purple, leaning dangerously far over the balcony of her father’s penthouse in Manhattan, waving to the paparazzi who clicked off shot after shot from the apartment below. Elizabeth, in a ten-thousand-dollar designer gown and impossibly high heels, sipping five-hundred-dollar champagne and dancing into the wee hours at a St. Tropez nightclub while a trio of morose men in black suits looked on. Elizabeth, blood staining the breast of her white dress, screaming as those same men dragged her away.
Anne closed her eyes, shutting out the last image. She’d gain nothing by remembering those moments. The past was the past and couldn’t be undone.
Yet she couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness. She looked out the window, at the picture-postcard view of snow-capped mountains against a turquoise sky. Rogers, Colorado, might have been on another planet, for all it resembled New York City. Those lofty peaks did have a mesmerizing effect, anchoring you to the earth in a way. Part of her would like to stay here forever, too, but she doubted she would. In a year, or two at most, she’d have to move on. She couldn’t afford to put down roots.
She drew a deep breath, collecting herself, then gathered up her purse and tote bag, and shrugged into her coat. She locked the door of her classroom and walked to the parking lot, her low-heeled boots clicking on the scuffed linoleum, echoing in the empty hallway.
Her parking space was close to the side entrance, directly under a security light that glowed most mornings when she arrived. But there was no need for the light today, though the shadows were beginning to lengthen as the February sun slid down toward its nightly hiding place behind the mountains.
The sudden descent to darkness had made her uneasy when she’d first arrived here. Now she accepted it as part of the environment, along with stunning bright sun that shone despite bitter cold, or the sudden snowstorms that buried the town in two feet of whiteness as soft and dry as powdered sugar.
She drove carefully through town, checking her rearview mirror often. People waved and she returned their greetings. That, too, had unsettled her at first, how people she’d never met greeted her as an old friend within a few days of her arrival. She’d never lived in a small town before, and had to get used to the idea that of course everyone knew the new elementary schoolteacher.
Dealing with the men had been the biggest challenge at first. More men than women lived in these mountains, she’d been told, and the arrival of an attractive young woman who was clearly unattached drew them like elk to a salt lick. Elizabeth would have been in heaven—the men were ski instructors, mountain climbers, cowboys, miners—all young and fit, rugged and handsome, straight out of a beer commercial or a romance novel. But Anne rebuffed them all, as politely as she could. She wasn’t interested in dating anyone. Period.
A rumor had started that her heart had been broken in New York and this was why she’d come west. The sympathetic looks directed her way after this story circulated were almost worse than the men’s relentless pursuit.
Things had calmed down after a few months. People had accepted that the new teacher was “standoffish,” but that didn’t stop them from being friendly and kind and concerned, though she suspected some of this was merely a front for their nosiness. People wanted to know her story and she had none to tell them.
She stopped at the only grocery in town to buy a frozen dinner and the makings of a salad, then drove the back way home. She tried to vary her route every few days, which wasn’t easy. There were only so many ways to reach the small house in a quiet subdivision three miles from town.
The house, painted pale green with buff trim, sat in the middle of the block. It had a one-car garage and a sharply peaked roof, and a covered front porch barely large enough for a single Adirondack chair, which still wore a dusting of snow from the last storm.
She unlocked the door and stood for a moment surveying the room. A sofa and chair, covered with a faded floral print, filled most of the small living room, the television balanced on an old-fashioned mahogany table with barley-twist legs. An oval wooden coffee table and a brass lamp completed the room’s furnishings, aside from a landscape print on the side wall. The place had come furnished. None of the items were things she would have picked out, but she’d grown accustomed to them. No sense changing things around when she couldn’t stay.
She stooped and picked up her mail from the floor, where it had fallen when the carrier had shoved it through the slot. Utility bills, the local paper, junk—the usual. Nothing was amiss about the mail or the house, yet she couldn’t shake her uneasiness. She eased out of the boots and padded into the kitchen in stocking feet and put away the groceries. She wished she had a drink. She had no liquor in the house—she hadn’t had a drink since she’d left New York. It seemed safer that way, to always be alert. But today she’d welcome the dulling of her senses, the softening of the sharp edges of feeling.
She put water on for tea instead, then went into the bedroom to change into jeans and a comfy sweater. Maybe she’d start a fire in the small woodstove in the living room, and try to lose herself in a novel.
The bedroom held the only piece of furniture in the house she really liked—an antique cherry sleigh bed, the wood burnished by years of use to a soft patina. She trailed one hand across the satin finish on her way to the closet. She stopped beside the only other piece of furniture in the room, a sagging armchair, and slipped out of the corduroy skirt and cotton turtleneck. Sensible clothes for racing after six-year-olds. Elizabeth would have laughed to see her in them.
She opened the closet and reached for a pair of jeans. She scarcely had time to register the presence of another person in the room when strong arms wrapped around her in a grip like iron. A hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream. Panic swept over her, blinding her. She fought with everything she had against this unknown assailant, but he held her fast.
“Shhh, shhh. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.” The man’s voice was soft in her ear, its gentleness at odds with the strength that bound her. “Look at me.”
He loosened his hold enough that she could turn her head to look at him. She screamed again as recognition shook her and choked on the sound as she stared into the eyes of a dead man.
Jake Westmoreland watched the woman in his arms closely, trying to judge if it was safe to uncover her mouth. He wasn’t ready to release his hold on her yet. Not because he feared she’d strike out at him, but because he’d waited so many months to hold her again.
She was thinner than he remembered, fragile as a bird in his hands, where he’d never thought of her as fragile before. Her hair was darker too, cut differently, and the bright streaks of color were gone. He’d seen her picture, so he should have been prepared for that. But nothing could have really prepared him for meeting her again, not after the trauma of their last parting. For months, he hadn’t even been sure she was still alive.
“I thought you were dead,” she said when he did remove his hand from her mouth. Tears brimmed in her eyes, glittering on her lashes.
“I was sure Giardino’s goons would go after you next.”
“Your friends got to me first. But they never told me you were still alive. How? The last time I saw you...” She shook her head. “So much blood...”
They told him later he had died, there on the floor of the suite at the Waldorf Astoria. But the trauma team had shocked his heart back to life and poured liters of blood into him to keep his organs from shutting down. He’d spent weeks in the hospital and months after that in rehab—months lying in bed with nothing to do but think about her.
He brushed her hair back from her temples, as if to reassure himself she was real, and not a dream. “Elizabeth, I—”
The pain in her eyes pierced him. “It’s Anne. Elizabeth doesn’t exist anymore. She died that day at the hotel.”
He’d known this, too, but in the moment his emotions had gotten the better of him. He stepped back, releasing her at last. “Why Anne?”
“It was my middle name.” Her bottom lip curved slightly in the beginnings of the teasing smile he’d come to know so well. The old smile he’d missed so much. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” There was so much he hadn’t known about her. “Can we sit down and talk?” He nodded toward the bed, the only place where two people could sit in the room.
A piercing whistle rent the air. He had his gun out of his shoulder holster before he even had time to think.
She stared at the weapon with an expression of disgust. “Are you going to shoot my tea kettle?”
He put the gun away.
“Let’s go into the living room,” she said. She pulled a robe from a hook on the closet door and wrapped it around herself, but not before he took in the full breasts rounded at the top of her black lace bra, the narrow waist fanning out to slim hips—and the scar on her lower back.
“Your tattoo’s gone,” he said. She’d had the words Nil opus captivis at the base of her spine, in delicate script. Take no prisoners. The motto of a woman who’d been determined to wring everything she could from life.
“I had it removed. They told me I shouldn’t leave any identifying marks.”
She led the way into the living room, going first to the kitchen to turn off the burner beneath the kettle, then to the front window to pull the blinds closed. He sat on the sofa, expecting she would sit beside him, but she retreated to the chair, her arms wrapped protectively around her middle.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“I still have friends at the Bureau. People who owe me favors.”
“No one is supposed to know where I am. They promised—” She broke off, her lips pressed together in a thin line. He could read the rest of her thoughts in her eyes. This wasn’t the first time the government had broken promises to her. What about all the promises he’d made?
“I never meant to lie to you,” he said. “I was trying to protect you.”
“You didn’t do a very good job of that, did you?”
He clenched his hands into fists. “No. Tell me what happened after I left. I heard you turned state’s evidence.”
“If you’re still with the FBI you should know all this.”
“I’m not with the Bureau anymore.”
She raised her brows. “Oh? Why not?”
“Officially, I was retired on disability.”
“And unofficially?”
“Unofficially, they thought I was too much of a risk.”
“Because of what happened with my father?”
“That, and...other things.” He’d committed the cardinal sin of developing an intimate relationship with a person he was supposed to be investigating. Not that Elizabeth Giardino had been the target of his investigations, but she was close enough to her father to raise questions about Jake’s integrity and his ability to perform his job. “Tell me what happened after I was shot,” he said.
“My father’s goons did try to drag me away, but they didn’t know you had the place surrounded. When the cops broke in, everyone was too focused on keeping my father safe to worry about me. Someone hustled me into a car and took me downtown.”
He tried to imagine the scene. She’d been covered in his blood, wild with fear. They’d have put her in an interrogation room and turned up the pressure, grilling her for hours, trying to break her. At one time he would have said she wasn’t a woman who could be broken, but now he wasn’t so sure. “They wanted you to provide evidence against your father.”
“They didn’t have to persuade me. After I saw what he did to you...I wanted to make him pay.”
Was it because of him, really? Or because her father had destroyed her trust? In one blast of gunfire she’d gone from pampered daddy’s girl to enemy number one. It must have made her question everything.
“I laid all the family’s dirty secrets out in public and he swore he’d kill me,” she continued. “He stood there in court and cursed me and said I was dead to him already.” She swallowed, and he sensed the effort it took for her to rein in her emotions.
“After that it was too dangerous for you to remain in New York,” he said.
She nodded. “It was too dangerous for me to be me. Within a month my father had escaped prison and disappeared, but we all know he’s still out there somewhere, and he hasn’t forgotten anything. The feds gave me a new identity. Elizabeth Giardino died in a tragic boating accident in the Caribbean and Anne Gardener came to Rogers, Colorado, to teach school.”
“I never imagined you as a schoolteacher.”
“I had a degree in English from Barnard. The Marshals Service pulled a few strings to get me my teaching certificate. They found this job for me, and this house.” She looked around the room. The plain, old-fashioned furniture was as unlike her hip Manhattan apartment as he could have imagined. “I suppose they thought this place was as anonymous as a town could be.” Her gaze shifted back to him. “Yet you found me.”
“I had inside information.”
“Other people can pay for information.”
Other people being her father and his goons. “I knew about this place. That it was on a list of possible hideouts. I persuaded a former colleague to let me take a look at the accounting records for the period after you disappeared and I found payment to a Colorado bank. I was able to trace that to this house.”
“But you still didn’t know I was here.”
“I looked online, through the archives of the local paper. I saw the announcement last summer about the new teacher. The timing was right, and I thought it might be you.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Not so easy. There are a lot of layers between you and the feds. Layers I helped design.”
“I forgot you started out as an accountant.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Not the picture most people have of the rough-and-tough federal agent.”
He’d been hired straight out of university to work as a forensic accountant for the Bureau. Following the money put away more criminals than shootouts. But then they’d needed someone to go undercover in the Giardino family and he’d volunteered, wanting a change from sitting behind a desk. He hadn’t counted on getting in so deep. He hadn’t counted on Elizabeth.
“How are you doing?” he asked. “Do you like it here?”
“I don’t dislike it. The people are friendly. I love the children.”
He tried to imagine her surrounded by first graders. He’d never thought of her as the mothering type, yet the image seemed to suit this new, quieter side of her. “It’s very different from the life you lived before,” he said.
“I’m very different.”
“Yeah.” A person didn’t go through the kinds of things they’d been through without some change. “How are you doing, really?” he asked.
“How do you think?” Her voice was hard, the accusation in her eyes like acid poured on his wounds. “It’s hard. And exhausting, being afraid all the time.”
“You don’t feel safe?”
“You of all people should know the answer to that. You know my father—he’ll do anything to get his way. And he meant it when he said he would see that I was dead. If you found me, he can too. Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Well, you’ve seen me. Now you can leave.” She stood, and cinched the robe tighter around her waist.
He rose also. “Eli—Anne. Listen to me. I need your help.”
“For what?”
“I need you to help me find your father.”
“Why? You said you’re no longer with the Bureau.”
“No. But if we find him he’ll go back to prison—and they won’t let him escape this time.”
“I can’t help you. All I want is to stay as far away from him as possible.”
“Don’t you want to put an end to this? Don’t you want to be safe again?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about finding your father and making sure he’s punished the way he deserves.”
“Revenge?” She spat the word, like a curse. “You want revenge?”
“Call it that if you want. Or call it justice. He’s killed too many people. Someone has to stop him.”
“Well, that someone won’t be me.”
“I’m not asking you to risk anything. I just want you to talk to me. To tell me where he might be hiding.”
“I already gave you everything I could. Why do you want more?”
She had given him everything—her body and her beauty and a willingness to risk that had made his own bravery seem a sham in comparison. “I need your help,” he said again.
“You’re as bad as he is—you only want to use people to get what you want.” Without another glance at him she left the room, the door to the bedroom clicking softly shut behind her.
He stared after her, feeling sick. Maybe her words hurt so much because they were too close to the truth. He did want to use her. She was the only link he had to Sam Giardino. The only way he could do what he had to do.