Point of No Return (11 page)

“Ah, Major, you never let us have any fun,” Buck said.

Buck was the most uncomplicated human she’d ever met. Fiercely loyal, superhero strength and a sucker for kids and animals. In the field, he always had goodies for the kids. Dogs followed him. Hell, he probably had goodies for them too. He’d almost come to blows with a chopper crew when they wouldn’t let a kitten he’d rescued on board. They gave in and the kitten found a good home at base camp.

“Santiago going with you tomorrow?” Honey asked as she went to get more food for her and Buck.

Gunny choked and coughed. “Why’d she be coming?”

Honey looked over and saw Coop and Buck exchange looks. So, they knew. Ah, hell. It was about time they got this into the open. She put the plates down and leaned a hip against the counter. “Everyone here knows you two are . . .” She decided on a polite term. “Making sheet music every chance you get.”

Gunny’s jaw muscles jittered and he turned a florid shade of red. It was a few moments before he found his voice. “How long have you known?”

Buck snorted. “The first day, man. The permanent grin on your face kinda gave you away.” Honey pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

“Shit.” Gunny shifted and scrubbed his hands over his buzz-cut hair.

“We’re a team, dude,” Cooper said matter-of-factly. “We know when one of us has to take a crap. How the two of you going to keep something like that from the rest of us?”

“We’re working in-tell-igence, remember?” Buck said.

“Give it a rest, guys.” She’d wanted to get it in the open, not harass Gunny about it. She passed Buck his plate.

“Ma’am, you want one of us to out, it’s me. Gloria . . . it would kill her to leave.”

“We’ll talk about it another time. No one is going anyplace.” At least not now. Technically no rules were being broken, and as long as they didn’t have any problems, it was okay. “New subject, please.”

Gunny dipped his head in a silent thank-you. “What’s it look like inside Global?” he said, toying with his beer bottle.

“Like the schematics. No windows. Only exterior glass is the front entry. Some interior glass doors. A wicked strong kind of stuff. Every door I saw needs a pass card. The tech area has a double entry. The control center looks like a spy movie set. Cameras are everywhere and monitored in that room. They have vid links to field units. Bristol can watch everything in the facility from his office and a setup in the back of a tricked-out Hummer.”

“Geesus. Overkill,” Buck said.

Cooper grinned and rubbed his palms together. “A challenge.”

The look on his face told her he was enjoying this. “That place is no amusement park.” She looked at each of them. “Global
looks
squeaky clean. If there’s a connection between that company and those girls . . . I want to find it. Coop, my man, I believe in your skills. Anything you need to make this easier, get it.”

“Okay, time to check these dudes out on your Mac,” he said. They went into the dining room and accessed Global files, getting familiar with them and looking for anything out of the ordinary.

After a couple of hours and coming up zip, Gunny leaned back in his chair, arms outstretched, and yawned. “I’m tired, I’m heading home. Got a long day tomorrow.”

“And long night,” Buck mumbled.

“Yeah.” Coop glanced at Gunny. “Better not be too tired, old man.”

Gunny ignored the remarks and went into the kitchen. Honey gave the two her best stink eye and followed him to the kitchen. “See you and Gloria tomorrow night, here. This time you guys get the food. Don’t want to go all over looking.”

Gunny stopped at the counter to scoop up the burn cell. “Yeah.” He fingered the take-out bag. “This place wasn’t exactly on your way home.”

“Heard the food was good.”

He tipped his head to the side and squinted. “Moore?”

She nodded. She’d shared her history with Moore. Even the affair. It would have been wrong to ask the team for help without them knowing details. Soon she would have to tell them about her
arrangement
with O’Brien.

“About Gloria and I. Are we good with you?”

“As long as you two stay good . . . we’re good.”

“Got it.”

She hoped he did. Their relationship went south, it would be a problem.

“Tomorrow night,” Gunny called out and disappeared down the stairs.

“Have fu-un,” Buck called out in a girlie voice.

She listened for the side door to close before she went to Coop and Buck. “You two lay off him about Santiago.”

“Ah. Major . . .” Buck started.

“I mean it,” she tramped over his words.

“He knows we’re just giving him a hard time. He won’t get mad,” Coop offered.

“You idiots. It isn’t him I’m worried about. Santiago gets wind of it and she will cut out your heart and feed it to you with fava beans before you know what’s happened.” She paused and leaned to get a view of Buck’s injured leg. “And you, my man, are in no condition to make a quick getaway.
You
will be an easy kill.”

Looks of realization plastered their faces. They gave each other sideways glances. Honey pointed to the laptops. “Work.”

She took a container of peanut butter ice cream to her bedroom, stripped to her skivvies, and curled up with her thoughts about Jack. Before the girls’ rescue, she’d messaged him twice about meeting. He didn’t respond. No answer after twenty-four hours meant the other person wasn’t available. Each time, she imagined he was deep into a job. Each time had been after his family was murdered. She didn’t know anything about Jack’s background and she couldn’t interpret his thoughts and feelings. Couldn’t begin to guess why he was holed up in a cabin in the woods. She had no intention of trying. She did need to tell him about her involvement before he found out from someone else. The only way to do that was a face-to-face. Over the weekend, she’d fly to Tampa to speak with the Saunders family, and on the return, stop in Tennessee to talk to Jack.

Chapter 9

Jack O’Brien sat on the steps of the lake cabin running a calloused thumb over the photo of his brother, sister-in-law and niece, smiling. Happy. Cinderella’s castle in the background. He propped the photo against the porch rails. Lee and Becca were good together and great parents to Ali. A now familiar sadness rippled over him.

He drained the beer and pushed to his feet, pitching the bottle into the bin with the other hundred or more empties. Across the lake, the sun was sinking behind the ridge and he leaned against a rickety porch support to watch.

Loneliness tackled him like a 350-pound lineman. He’d lost his brother, his best friend and the only person he trusted. What he wouldn’t give to talk to Lee one more time.

Or
Honey. Every moment he wasn’t thinking of getting Lee’s murderer she invaded his thoughts. Since Neuberger told him she was the one coming he’d been in paranoia hell what-if’ing.
If
there’d been an ulterior motive behind their fuck-fests. Assessing the time they’d been together, searching for a clue she was setting him up to use as an asset. There was nothing. What he knew was she’d unleashed a primal lust in him. A lizard brain thing that made him feel . . .
feel
? Comfort. The beginnings of trust. He was a fucking asshole. He’d let his weakness for women put him in the middle of the mother of all clusterfucks. “Fucking. Asshole.” The shouted words skipped over the lake like a stone then bounced off the far cliffs, taunting him. He turned his frustration on the trash bin, delivering a wicked kick that sent it rolling across the porch, spewing beer bottles in its wake. His fist smashed the roof support with a hard right. A couple decades’ worth of leaf accumulation and who knows what fucking else rained down, making him look like the dirtbag he was. He swiped bloody knuckles across his shirt, fighting back grief and a bone-deep sadness that Honey had used him.
He was a major clusterfucking asshole.

Time to end the pity party.
Think about what you’re doing.
He took in long breaths, letting them out slowly.
Why you’re doing it.
If it had been just him, he’d destroy Global. Make sure in the process he’d be destroyed, ending his pain. It wasn’t just him. The blowback would hurt his mother. The media would have no mercy. They’d play up the angle of a former agency man now a contract spy. His employers would protect themselves. Do what they do best. Spread disinformation. Another deep breath. They’d make him out to be a rogue psychopath so as not to bring crap down on them. They’d find the women he’d been with. Even Honey. Say he had a sex addiction. Hell, for all he knew he did. Women were his weakness. He liked everything about them. Liked watching them move. Their feel, their scent. The sex. Didn’t every guy? Once he was dead, they could say anything. None of his so-called agency friends would, could, stand up for him. Global would get away with everything.

“Damn it.”

He paced the porch, anger and frustration blanketing him like the crap from the roof. He glanced around. The hills across the lake were silhouetted against the last light of the day. Already too dark for a run. He dropped and began doing push-ups. Up, down. Up, down. At two-fifty his heart raced, sweat dripped from his face and soaked his clothes. He was getting soft. Not so long ago he would have been closer to five hundred before he felt like this. He kept going, working on forgetting he could be the reason Lee and Becca were dead and forgetting
her
. Her scent. How sweet she tasted. How his heart kicked when she smiled. How their slick bodies sounded and felt slamming together. He went to his feet and did lunges until he passed the point of his physical endurance. Until the sound of Ali’s sobs faded in his head. The memory of his mother’s pain subsided. Until he was too exhausted to want her.

He dropped, rolled to a sit and pressed his back against the rough wood of the cabin. Waiting for his breathing and heart rate to return to normal, he began planning how to deal with Honey. It stood to reason, if they wanted to nail him they would hit his weakness. Sex. If they thought they could send her to get information by fucking him, they were beyond stupid. He used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his face. Sending Honey meant they knew about their affair. And they didn’t find out from him. He’d been careful when arranging and going to their meetings. It had come from her. He pushed to his feet and picked up the scattered bottles. Fuck. Let her come. He would use
her
as an asset and find out what she knew, what she’d learned from Ramsey and Saunders, then send her packing. He paused and lifted the photo, using his elbow to wipe away the roof gunk. Lee looked out at him seeming to say,
Be careful, brother.

Lee was right. Lee was always right.

Jack stripped away his sweaty, grunge-coated clothes, leaving them where they lay on the porch. Inside, he put a match to the oil lamps and debated starting a fire. Soon the day’s heat would let go and be replaced with the night chill. Screw it. At the cast iron sink, he worked the pump handle and stuck his head under the flow of freezing water. He soaked a towel, using it to wipe his body, raising gooseflesh on his damp skin. He pulled on sweats and changed his fire decision, stacking the old fire grate high with wood. Before long soaring flames warmed him and childhood memories swirled like the smoke curling up the chimney. The family spent six weeks every summer here. Some weekends, when his dad could get away. His mom wasn’t fond of the
outdoor facilities
but she and Dad were happy, even silly here. Here, he and Lee enjoyed complete freedom and loved every minute. They slept on the screen porch most nights and learned to hunt, fish and drive that old pickup. After he went to work for the agency, he often wondered how his dad, the big CIA agent, had been able to take such huge chunks of vacation time. How had Honey been able to take chunks of time to meet? Damn it. He shook his head to chase thoughts of her away and turned to the backpack containing Becca’s records and notes. Work would clear his head. He dumped the papers on the table, separating her handwritten journals from other documents and files. Papers more than three years old were returned to the bag. It was unlikely anything that old would be relevant. He made a pile of what was left, sorted them in chronological order, and settled in with a beer and a bag of chips to read.

Three beers and as many hours later he called it quits. Words ran together and Becca hadn’t been writing a thriller. He shuffled the stack he’d looked through into a neat pile, yawned and stretched. An image of Honey naked on the bed in Amsterdam doing the same overtook his mind. A shudder rattled him to the core. “Motherfucker.” Betrayal hurt.

Chapter 10

Honey entered Global’s classroom and was greeted with perfunctory nods, grunts and hard looks. Staff, trainees, and company veterans milled around drinking coffee. Long hair and beards made the seven veterans easy to spot among the clean-shaven, buzz-cut trainees.

Bristol swaggered through a door looking like something had crawled up his ass and died and came straight for her. She expected some wiseass remark about her uniform.

“About time you got here.” He puffed up and dramatically checked the wall clock. “I told you we started at seven.”

What the fuck?
He
said
seven thirty. Surprised by his attempt to discredit her, Honey plastered a cold smile on her face and spoke clearly, slowly. “I won’t be late again,” she said, squashing his bid for a confrontation and affectively deflating him.

“Attention,” he called out. “We can begin now. Major Thornton, from the DoD, has finally graced us with her presence.” The eyes of everyone in the room were on her. Without another word, Bristol turned and left.

Men silently deposited cups on tables and streamed out. Honey fell in and followed the group down a corridor and outside to board a coach bus for the fifteen-minute ride to the simulated village. They debussed and proceeded to an outdoor training pavilion, where four instructors stood patiently next to tables holding an array of laptops and monitors.