Dying Commitment (Lucky Thirteen) (15 page)

The three of us moved past the hostess stand and headed toward the back. Jack had a nice hold on my arm, relaxed but tight. Nothing to alarm anyone looking at us. But what did you expect from a former spy? He knew people. The other guy, the one with the tattoos… That was a different story. He was no more than a goon, good for muscle and breaking bones. No finesse.

A few seconds later, two more men appeared near the back door, in matching suits to the big guy in front of me.

Jack grinned at me, malevolent and smug. “Mr. Giroux will see you now.”

“I bet he will,” I said. “Lead the way?”

He led me toward the back of the restaurant. The door was off from everything else, looking more like a fire exit, but it was locked to the public. He pulled out a small key he used to unlock it.

Faced with these guys, I was pretty much leaning toward the whole “big mistake” aspect, but I’d already started down this path. I had to keep going. I couldn’t second guess myself. I had to end this nightmare I’d been living in for so long. Maybe then, I’d deserve someone like Dylan. Unfortunately, I knew for sure that I’d never deserve Dylan himself.

There were boxes all piled up around the walls of this room. In one section, another door, which the big man opened and gestured for me to enter. I swallowed, my heart pounding as I entered. It was a stairwell, descending into darkness that left me cold and ended opening out into a large room with a table and two chairs. There was one man at the table, who stood as I entered. His dark eyes regarded me carefully, suspicion in his gaze as he set his hands on his hips.

“I didn’t believe it. After how much trouble the US went through to steal you away, and here you walk right back into our clutches.”

“How very villianish of you to put it like that, Alex.”

“You will not be leaving this time,” Giroux replied, smiling in that smug way that made me want to kick him in the crotch.

“That’s not my goal,” I said. “I’m not here for you. I’m here to see Jack.”

Alex’s eyebrow rose. “Now, that’s interesting. Why should Jack talk to you?”

“That’s between me and him,” I replied, flicking a glance behind Alex. Jack had taken his place behind Alex and had been silent since we entered, his arms cross over his chest.

Alex was a handsome man, but not excessively bulky. Actually, he was quite wiry.

Jack was not. He was strong, and it looked like his muscles had grown since we’d last seen each other. The way he’d gripped my arm also proved that. His face was sunken, hollow of any emotion that might have tied him to the old Jack I’d once known. I hadn’t gotten much of a good look at him before in the bathroom when he’d attacked me. Now that I saw him so close… he was barely the man I’d known.

“Jack, she’s yours.” Alex smiled as he turned his body to include Jack. Jack didn’t move. Didn’t say a word. I’d expected the cocky, egotistical behavior he’d shown before, but right then, he looked like he hadn’t wanted to see me at all. “You know what I want from Miss Long, yes?”

Jack nodded. “Yes, Mr. Giroux.”

“See that I get it.”

Orders? Jack sucked at taking orders. Or at least he had. Now he simply nodded, and Alex walked up to me, close. His gaze swept over me. “I’d appreciate you making this easy on me. If you cooperate with Jack, perhaps you’ll survive as well as you did when Lucky Thirteen came for you three years ago.”

He started to leave when I decided to push that knife into his side. “Addison’s doing well.”

He froze with his back toward me.

“Cady—” Jack started to talk but I cut him off.

“Actually, she’s getting married in a couple weeks. Did you get your invite?” His fists balled, his body shook with barely leashed rage. “Well, maybe it’s in the mail still. You know how international mail takes forever.”

He turned, rage apparent on his face and stalked toward me. I didn’t move, determined not to let him make me back down. “She and the fiancé are so incredibly perfect for each other. It’s a little obnoxious, especially at night when they fuck like bunnies.”

He tried to backhand me, but I ducked and his hand sliced through the air. I swept my foot behind his knees, which knocked him off-balance and he hit the ground in a matter of seconds. Jack grabbed me before the guards did, twisting an arm back and his other hand gripping my bangs tightly. He yanked my head back so my neck was exposed.

God. That was so worth it.

“Sorry, fucker. Couldn’t help myself,” I said through clenched teeth, laughing. Jack tightened his grip. “On second thought, I’m not really sorry.”

Alex got to his feet, his body trembling with fury. I braced myself for the hit to come, but it didn’t. He turned back to Jack. “I expect results soon. Any way possible.” He whirled away and stormed out of the room.

Silence fell over the room as the door slammed shut. I couldn’t really move, not with Jack holding me as he was. He released me, shoving me into the guards, who grabbed my arms and held me tight.

Jack’s footsteps echoed in the silence as he came near me. He stopped directly in front of me, his arms crossed, his face still scowling. His eyes swept behind me. “Get out.”

No one moved.

“Seriously, you two. Let her loose, and get the fuck out of the room.” Slowly, the grips on me lightened. I pulled away from them as soon as I could and watched them leave. The door shut behind them, and then I was left in the room, alone, with my worst nightmare.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cadence

Jack hadn’t moved, not once since his goons had left the room. He stared hard at me, the scowl embedded deep on his face. Finally, he shook his head. “You’re still reckless. Impulsive.”

He turned away from me and walked back to the table. My laptop was on it, open to the home screen I’d created in the encryption process. They were still trying to get into it. I breathed out an inward sigh of relief. I’d lied a little to Dylan. There were secrets on that laptop. Not all of them were on the hard drive, because it was a government laptop. I wasn’t even supposed to use a portable drive on it.

“I told you to go home. I told you not to come.”

“You stopped being able to give me orders when you shot me in the chest.”

“Even then you couldn’t take orders. You were supposed to die, Cady.” A rueful laugh escaped him. “I could have spared you all this.”

“Spared me? Is that how you justify yourself?”

“Alex is a monster. I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” I scoffed. “Be straight with me. What now? What happens now? Are you going to kill me again?” Because I was going to have a serious issue with that. I kinda liked the living thing.

“There’s so much going on you have zero fucking clue about,” Jack sneered. He leaned over the table, staring at the blinking cursor on the screen. “You’re such a goddamn little girl.”

“A little girl you fucked. What does that make you, old man?” I replied. It was a little crude to say it that way, but if he wanted superiority over me, he wasn’t going to get it. Maybe one time I’d given him that superiority over me, but I was fresh out of school. And I’d had months of physical therapy to think about what he’d done, what I’d done wrong, and how I could make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

“A goddamned idiot.”

Well that wasn’t exactly what I expected him to say. I slid into the seat across from where he stood and caught his eye as he leaned over the table. “What happened to you, Jack? You weren’t this person.”

“You’re too trusting, Cady. That’s your problem.”

Ha. Dylan would have argued with that.

“No. That’s not it, Jack. You were different. From the moment we met you were different than that day you shot me.” I swallowed. “I accept that you’re probably going to kill me again. And this time, it will likely be permanent. But at least be straight with me before you do. Give me that.”

Silence followed. The only sounds were from the restaurant beyond us and our own breathing. Jack took in a deep inhale. Letting it out slowly, he sunk into the other chair. “I had to do everything I did. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit. There’s always a choice.”

“You’re so goddamn naive, Cady. Even now, I’d have thought you’d have figured it out by now. But you’re just a kid still.” He shook his head. “Sometimes, you have to do things that… you really don’t want to do, so you can save someone you love.”

I didn’t say anything, but that got my wheels turning. Wasn’t that what I was doing with Dylan? Cutting him out so I could save him? Because if he knew where I was, he’d have stormed the place. But maybe that wasn’t exactly what Jack meant. “What does he have on you, Jack?”

“What?”

“What does Alex have on you? It’s gotta be something huge for you to forget everything you’ve ever believed in, to walk out on a lifetime of work like it was nothing.”

“You always were a smart girl, sweet pea.” Jack leaned back in his chair. More quiet between us. Finally, he pulled out his wallet and slipped a picture toward me. It was of a pretty girl, maybe 14 or so. Long blonde curls, with high cheekbones.

I stopped, taking in the implications of what he was saying. “Who is she?”

“My daughter. She’s seventeen now. That picture’s from before…” He frowned and slapped his hand over it, pulling it back toward him. He slipped it back in his wallet. “I see her as often as I want to, as long as I do my job.”

“Killing people for Alex Giroux?”

Just when you thought someone couldn’t become any more of a monster, they took another step off the deep end. Alex Giroux was holding a kid, a teenager, to control her father. I didn’t even know that Jack had a kid.

This put a whole new spin on things, and I didn’t like it. Five years of hate were melting away and I didn’t like it. I wanted that hate, that anger. I wanted to hold it close and never let it go.

A small sardonic smile flittered across his face before it vanished. “I didn’t show you her so you could feel bad for me, Cady. But I do want you know that I was not the monster you thought I was.”

“Was?”

“I’ve become the monster I had to be, to save her.” He shook his head. “She doesn’t know everything. She’s well-treated.”

He cleared his throat. “Now, here’s the problem I have now. Alex wants the information on this laptop. He’s had his best guys on it, and nothing. I need you to open it up.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”

“This needs to happen, sweet pea. You know what I’ll do to achieve the goal.”

“He had her before? When you shot me?” I asked, calmly.

He nodded. “You were supposed to die. I got the drive with the information on SEAL Team Thirteen.”

“But I didn’t die.”

“Nope. You didn’t. And you laid a trap in the files.”

I grinned at him. “Found my present, did you?”

“Managed to copy about half the information before the drive fried.” That was why the files on the team had been incomplete when we’d recovered Marie’s laptop. Because he’d triggered the fail safe trying to crack my encryption.

“Aww, that’s too bad.”

“Unlock the laptop.”

“No.”

“Cady, don’t make me do something that’s going to hurt you.”

“Don’t act like you give a shit about hurting me. You’re not getting anything from me.”

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly. “Change your mind, Cady. Change it, and this will all go away.”

Slowly, I turned my head side to side, keeping my eyes on his.

He stood up. “Please, Cady. I don’t want to do this. Last time. Unlock the laptop.”

“I will die a second time before I give you information that will let you kill men that have families and wives. Men I consider friends.”

“Oh, Cady…Killing you was never in the plan. Not this time.”

He strode over to the door and pulled it open. The two goons were outside. “Take her to the basement.”

“Aren’t we in the basement?”

“There’s a second one below us. Soundproof.” Because of course there was a second basement. There was always a second basement. When I met Jack’s eyes, as his goons came over and pulled me from my seat, they had turned cold and hard, but even with that wall of ice, I could see the regret deep within them.

~*~*~

Metal chairs were uncomfortable. Especially when you were tied down to one. I was woozy, mostly because they’d injected me with something, and it kept making me tired. My vision spun if I moved too much, even if it was just my head. Not that I could move too much. My hands were tied to the arms of the chair and my legs were strapped to chair legs there too.

Jack leaned over me, searching my eyes. “How we feeling, Cady?”

I flicked my eyes over to where he was, though he wasn’t too far from me anyway. “I feel… you’re an asshole.”

He chuckled, but it echoed inside my head. “Good. You’re learning. I gave you a nice little un-inhibitor, sweet pea. It won’t hurt you, but you’ll start talking a whole lot more soon. Then we can find out all about what’s on the laptop, okay?”

“Hate you.”

“Understandable. If I were you, I’d hate me too.” He pulled up a chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Your eyes are a little dilated. Not enough juice, I don’t think. We have a few minutes, so let’s get another dose inside you and then I think we can get started.”