Risk of Exposure (Alpha Ops Book 6) (11 page)

“This whole thing was a distraction. They put their armored vehicles here so they can really invade somewhere else.
Fuck
.” She didn’t know if she was upset that she couldn’t stop an invasion or upset that all the time she’d spent here was a wasted op. Well, maybe not wasted if she could warn people about it.

“My last job, I was in Athens for the G20 meetings,” Mal said. “I kind of got involved in a thing there. Some Russians were going to blow up the Russian embassy.”

“Wait. The
Russians
were going to blow up the
Russian
embassy?”

“Yup. When we caught the people involved, all they would say was, ‘It was just a distraction,’ and at the time, we couldn’t figure out what it would have distracted us from, because nothing else happened during the G20 meetings. Maybe they were setting a series of distractions to keep everyone looking in one direction—or multiple directions—and not looking at where the action really was.”

“We have got to get word back. Otherwise we will have played right into their hands.
Dammit
.” She slammed her hand on the steering wheel.

Malone reached over and took her hand, rubbing his gloved thumb over her palm. Warmth slowly pushed through her, along with a reassurance.

“Thank you for doing all this with me,” she said in a low voice.

He laughed, almost too heartily. “What are you talking about? You didn’t give me a choice, remember? You were going to get me fired if I didn’t help you!” He took his hand back and looked out the window.

It was as if she’d accidentally switched him off. The nice Malone, that was. What had she said? She’d thought that maybe they’d found some weird connection, so unlikely in their field. But as with freaking everything else in the past week, she’d been wrong. “Too right. I was just being nice. After all this traipsing around in the snow, nearly getting you killed, I thought it polite to thank you.”

“Well, thank you. That’s the first time I think you’ve shown your polite side. It’s noted.”

Abby stiffened. Why was he suddenly being such an ass?

J
esus. Why was he being such a wanker? It was like a compulsion. He’d been fine being kind to her before he acknowledged that he might have feelings, and now he had no control over how fast his mouth was backpedaling.

“You know, you didn’t have to keep fucking me if you were only here under protest. Unless you were suffering from Stockholm syndrome?” Her voice was as frigid as the night air.

He wanted to placate her, to soothe the spikiness of the mood in the vehicle as it bumped over God knew what, plowing through the snow. “Look. I did what you asked me to. The mission’s nearly over. Let’s not allow tantrums to get in the way of the endgame.”

“Tantrums?” she nearly yelled. “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you talking about me having a tantrum? Is there any way for you to be more condescending?”

“Okay, maybe that was the wrong word. Let’s just get this finished. One call to your masters and we should be all free to go back to the way things were before.”

“Before?”

“I don’t know, but I seem to have divided my life between preblackmail and postblackmail. So when you make your call to whoever pulls your strings at Langley, I will go back to my apartment, write my final report, telling your father that you are able to take care of yourself, and call it a day. Maybe get to go back to Greece, where the beaches, and women, are always warm.” What the fuck was he saying? He had to stop. Just stop speaking.

“I’ll be able to tell my father a fair few things about you, too, don’t forget. How you screwed me every chance you got and then just left when the job was done. My
father’s
job.” She spoke between gritted teeth.

“So that’s it, is it? We’re back to the blackmail? What’s wrong with you? I’ve been risking my life for you for the past few days, risking my limbs, which I doubt would take to frostbite a second time without needing to chop the fucking things off…I’ve had your back, and all you’ve got for me is ‘I’m going to tell Daddy’? It’s pathetic.” Okay, now heat pulsed through him and not in a good way. His temper was getting dangerously close to the surface, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d start punching things again. He wondered if the swanky new armored vehicle would stand up to the assault he badly wanted to unleash on it.
What is wrong with me?

His carefully tucked-away fury unfurled in his chest, spreading heat through him. This wasn’t like him. No one who knew him could ever say he was one to lose his temper. Not that he let people close. His anger never surfaced. Never. But it kept bubbling up, like an untamed geyser.

“It seems to be the only reason you’re here, isn’t it?” she shot back. “You call yourself a soldier? You’d be ready to go back to the bar, pick up some woman, drink some cheap booze, and just wait for war to break out. Why would you care? You gave up service. At least I still know about loyalty, patriotism…” She bit out every word, and he couldn’t help wondering whether she’d been thinking about this all along.

“Don’t you dare talk to me about patriotism. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and no fucking clue about me. Just because you shagged me doesn’t mean you’re an expert on me now. For your information, in the UK we’re taught to think for ourselves, not just blindly repeat pledges and doctrines. You’re a fucking sheep is what you are. A scared sheep at that. Remember who was fucking whimpering when she thought I’d left her? That was you, love. You’re just a scared little girl.”
For the love of God, shut up. Shut up now.

“You think this scared little girl would want to go to a beach when Russia is about to invade a European country? I thought you cared about that shit. You told me you did. Or was everything out of your mouth a lie? What am I saying? Of course it’s a lie. It’s what you do.”

“It’s what I do? What does that even mean? I work for your father, that’s it.”

“And you’ve never lied to me?” she scoffed.

“I’ve never—” He hesitated. Did a lie of omission count?

“Exactly.” She sounded triumphant, and that burned him. She really thought everything out of his mouth was a lie?

“I’ve been utterly truthful to you about everything, except one thing I didn’t tell you—because you didn’t need to know. And you still don’t.” No! He’d opened the door. He never wanted to tell her that she’d killed one of her muggers. She didn’t need to know. Still didn’t.

She swallowed. “I knew it. My father has a habit of taking on fuckups and trying to make them worthy. Guess it didn’t work for you, did it? Is that why you got this gig? You’re ex-SAS and you’re sent to watch me from across the street. I guess he didn’t trust you with anything…I don’t know…important?”

“All right. Stop the fucking car. I’m going to walk back to my apartment and pretend I never met you. I think that would probably serve you better right now. You can’t want a fuckup around your mission. I’m out of here.”

She slowed to a stop. “Oh, sure, sure. Run and hide.”

Belying the emotions roiling in him, he calmly got out. “You should watch your right hook, love. You killed one of your muggers. Nasty business.” He slammed the door and started walking. As she drove by, he just kept his head tucked down. Baston didn’t pay him enough to take this shit.

Except he did. Every day. Dealing with shit was his specialty. How had he let her get under his skin like that? So she insulted him, called him out on his work record, his patriotism. Claimed he’d only been hired because he was a screwup. Well, everyone in his line of work was. Everyone. That’s how they could do the things they could do.

He stopped and looked up. Fuck. She’d probably struck out because she was scared. And he had done nothing to soothe her. He’d just riled her up even more, and why? Because he was fucking scared of the feelings that he had for her.

Nuts. It was all wrong; they weren’t supposed to be together. The very thought was crazy. They led different lives—his centered on holding down his job and trying to do a bit of good in the world, and hers was centered on where the CIA would send her next. Judging by what she’d said, she didn’t seem to rate him too highly. Just as a hired gun for her father. And she was probably right. But all that aside, he’d just let her take on the Russians by herself because she hurt his feelings. And that was a wuss move.

 What just happened? She drove on autopilot toward the orphanage so she could charge her phone without getting stuck in the snow on the way back into town. She’d killed someone? He just dropped it on her and left? Her hands shook no matter how tight she held the steering wheel.

She’d known that there was a possibility that she’d have to kill someone in her line of work, but she’d always assumed that it would be a terrorist or to stop something awful from happening. She didn’t imagine she’d do it with her bare hands, just to prevent being a victim of a common mugging. Why had he told her?

Because you were acting like a spoiled child. You know better than to accuse anyone of being a fuckup, let alone a black-ops combat veteran who had seen who knew what in his career. Done who knew what.
She was truly the worst person in the world.

The burn in her stomach was still there. She’d wanted to hurt him for hurting her. And she had. And he’d hurt her right back again. That was a cycle that would never stop.

She’d only known him for a few days and she already felt his presence under her skin, like a warm protective layer…and she hadn’t realized it until he’d left.

Until she’d made him leave, if she was being honest with herself.

She’d grab his phone from the barn, make her call, and then go get him. Apologize. Grovel. Whatever it took to have him hold her again.

She cruised to a halt on the far side of the barn. Darkness still invaded the farm, with icicles twinkling in the sporadic moonlight. It looked like a perfect Christmas scene. Quiet and calm. She hoped everybody was sleeping off the effects of the vodka.

If she were lucky, she’d be home and making up with Mal within an hour. She grinned and stretched. That sounded like the perfect end to a perfectly weird day.

She stepped quietly around the piles of snow to the front of the barn. She pulled the door open at the exact same time as she saw a mass of footprints leading inside. Fuck. She’d been careless—her mind on Malone. It was too late. Three sets of guns trained on her.

Anton and his three friends, except Anton hadn’t even bothered to draw his gun. He held his arms out like she was his long-lost…lover? She cringed. What had she done? Jeopardized the mission, sent Mal away, and now she couldn’t call to warn Langley about the Russians’ attempt at distraction. Had her base lack of protocol caused war? The very thing she was sent to avoid?

“We were so worried about you when I came to your room and found you gone,” he said.

“Why did you come to my room?” she hedged. She could get out of this, she was sure.

He cocked his head. “Why do you think?” he asked almost coquettishly.

Oh Lord. She dipped her head as if she were embarrassed. “I don’t know.”

But this wasn’t a flirtation, even if his coming to her room had started out as one. She could see that now. The other men trained their guns on her, with eyes that said they were a hop, skip, and a jump away from lighting her up. She reached her hands up. “Hey—I’m not dangerous, I promise,” she said with a conversational tone and an expression that invited them into the humor of the situation.
Four men against little ol’ me.

There was silence, and she started to see a slightly bigger picture. She’d just arrived in a Russian army armored truck. Under normal circumstances, that would be very bad, or very good, depending on where their sympathies lay. Maybe she could play on that. If they were Russian sympathizers, they might be friendly to someone who appeared to also be one. But then if it went the other way, she could be sent to a Ukrainian city jail, and that was about as good as it sounded.

She needed to figure them out. Get them talking.

She slowly brought her hands down with a smile. Two of the men ignored her move, but the third came to attention, leveling her in his gun sight. She flared her hands at her side. “Remember? Not dangerous.” She smiled again. And then remembered how much they’d all been drinking mere hours before.

Anton nodded to one of the men, who brushed past her to release a hatch in the barn floor. Under the hatch was some kind of dark…oh no. She wasn’t going down that hole without a fight. Her heart clenched. And then her stomach. She balked at the thought of fighting. After what Malone had said, dare she ever hit anyone again? Her vision blurred at the memory of the fight in the alleyway in front of her apartment entrance. She remembered using her carbon baton on his nuts and throat. The other she’d punched…he’d reeled backward to the corner of the Dumpster, but she’d turned away and run for the door. Which one had she killed? How could she do it differently this time?

The paralysis numbed her. Her fists clenched, but she dared not swing. She didn’t want to kill an innocent policeman. For all she knew, they were just honest Ukrainian police, trying to figure out her odd behavior. She didn’t want to fight them. Dared not—

Something hit the back of her head. Her ears rang, and she crumpled into blackness.

A
bby awoke, tied to a wooden chair. She tried to see the room she was in. Not in the house, for she’d made sure she knew all the rooms and closets intimately during her time there.

And then the pounding in her head reminded her. She’d been whacked over the head with something while she’d been contemplating how not to get thrown in the cellar. She hadn’t been quick enough, obviously. She was under the barn.

The walls were made of the same large hunks of stone as the farmhouse, but the ceiling was just the slatted floorboards of the barn. Chinks of light showed through the more warped and aged pieces of wood, and bits of hay poked through. There was a small sprinkling of hay on the cellar floor, which must be directly below where the hatch had opened.

But still. Tied to a chair.

She tried hard to tamp down the hopelessness she felt. Was it fear that was prickling her skin and churning her stomach? She preferred to pretend it had been a bad oyster. Not that she’d had oysters for years, but it allowed her brain to concentrate on getting out of the dark, dank room and not on her headache and pangs of despair.

A light came on, flickering as if it had just been awoken from a long sleep. In front of her, a bare bulb swung from the ceiling. Tanoff’s son opened the hatch and unfolded the wooden stairs. When he reached the bottom, he said, “
Khorosho
,” to someone at the top, who pulled up the stairs again. The door of the hatch closed, and he cracked his knuckles.

“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?” As the words left her mouth, she suddenly had a bad feeling about Anton and the way he’d stared at her when he first met her, how he’d tried to get her to stay up with them the previous night. And now she knew he had tried to visit with her in her room. Well, she hoped he wouldn’t do anything…unbecoming to an officer of the law. She couldn’t even bring herself to admit the word she was scared of. Not scared. Never. Her fidgeting fingers behind the back of the chair told her differently.

“Doing what, Abigail?” he said in a soft voice that frankly creeped her out more than the cellar.

She nodded her head at their situation. “Is this Ukrainian hospitality? Is this how you treat guests? Volunteers?” She experimented with outrage to see if that would affect him.

His tone was conversational, as if holding her hostage, tied to a chair, was to him the equivalent to sitting opposite her at a tea party. “You see, my mother was always suspicious of you. She couldn’t understand why Aide Internationale—did I say that correctly?—would send someone to them. There are, after all, orphanages with many more children in other parts of the country.” He cocked his head to one side.

“My assignments are always given to me. I’ve never chosen them. I’m not allowed to.” As the words came out, she knew she’d worded it wrongly. She’d basically made herself sound as if she were a spy. “Like your police assignments. Someone gives you jobs to do? It’s the same with me.”
Try to establish a rapport.
“We both have bosses to answer to, and mine thought my strength was with children—like your parents’ is. We love little Dmitri, and Lana, and Anton, who they named after you.” She allowed her voice and face to become soft and gentle.

It didn’t work.

He drew closer. “The only question in my mind is who you are spying on here, and why. Are you an American agent, or a Russian one, or a Ukrainian? Or maybe a Chinese spy. I’ve heard they recruit Caucasian women to work for them.”

She filed that away to tell her superiors—she hadn’t heard that before.

“I’m an aid worker.”

“And I’m sorry you refuse to give me what I want,” he said.

She didn’t know what he meant until he very softly stroked her cheek.

It took Malone another hour to reach the farm. The whole time he was trying to figure out what he could say to her, how he could apologize for being a complete and utter git. He knew that their relationship—if you could call it that—might not work in the real world. But it would be rude not to try, wouldn’t it? They’d be like the biggest quitters in the world if they didn’t, surely.

But by the time he got there, he’d become less certain. He was completely inexperienced when it came to relationships. How did you even start one? Was he supposed to ask her out for dinner? He had no idea. Now he wished he’d asked some of the blokes he’d been working with recently. They all seemed to do all right with the ladies.

When he crested the small hill that hid the sensor meadow from the farmhouse, it was all still silent and dark. He paused. This was a bad idea. She’d probably grabbed his phone and made her way back to her apartment. His shoulders slumped. Oh well, he’d done the walk once before.

He turned to rejoin the road to the side of the orphanage, but something moved and caught his eye. It was one of the policemen holding his weapon up and stalking across the courtyard between the barn and the farmhouse. Well, that can’t be good.

Immediately his brain started filtering possibilities. He dropped to the ground and belly-crawled so he could get better eyes on the target. The barn door was open, but it looked like the policeman had come from that direction. He did a mental inventory of the things he had on him still. Binoculars and one gun. He stowed the gun where he lay. He didn’t like shooting anyone who was just trying to do a legit job. There were exceptions to that, but he didn’t know enough about what was going on here to make a good decision that he could live with.

The guy stopped by the kitchen door of the house and looked in, as if deciding whether or not anyone was inside. Or whether or not to storm in. God, Mal hoped he decided to stay outside. He didn’t like the idea of someone with a gun being around so many children who had an inclination to wander around in the snow. But the policeman just stood, gun now at his side, as if on sentry.

So that’s one at the kitchen door; maybe his friends will be at the other exits.
Mal recced the house, taking his time to ensure he wasn’t spotted. Yup, there was one at every egress to the property. So they’d spotted Abby? Or caught her and suspected there was someone else with her. A gut feeling told him that was it. Once he’d rounded the barn, he knew it was true. The armored vehicle was still there, meaning unless she’d decided to get the exercise of walking back to town, they had her. Or she was hiding.

He sighed. So he had to take the police out one by one. There were four total and maybe Abby’s orphanage boss, depending on how entrenched he was in what was going on.

The key was silence, which was his specialty. There used to be a joke in England after the BBC showed the first-ever footage of the SAS in action, when they stormed the Iranian embassy in London, rescuing all the hostages. It was something to do with an invisible lover, trained to get in and out without anyone noticing. As it crossed his mind, he realized the joke wasn’t entirely flattering.

As he always did in the seconds before being propelled into action, he said to himself, “Who dares, wins,” the motto of his old regiment.
Here’s to winning.

He caught the first man, guarding the front door, as he was lighting a cigarette.
That habit’ll kill you, just not today, mate.
The guy didn’t even see Mal, who held him in a choke hold until he passed out and not a second more. Mal grabbed some plastic zip ties from his pocket and tied the guard’s hands between his legs. All he’d be able to do is shout by the time he came to—and by that time, hopefully it’d all be over.

The next bloke was too conveniently next to a woodpile, so Mal just crept up behind him and thwacked him on the back of the head. He crumpled without a sound.

Mal wondered if this was all going too easy—it was his nature to question ease—when the guy he’d seen earlier came upon him as he was zip-tying the second guy.

Ah, well, spoke too soon. He put his hands up and smiled and waited for the man to get closer. He did. People with guns always think they have the upper hand, but unless they shoot immediately, they rarely did.

The man motioned to Mal to turn around, which he did. But as soon as the gun prodded him in the back, Mal turned, grabbed the gun out of his grip, and threw it into the snow. The policeman was so surprised that Mal hadn’t turned it on him that his gaze followed the gun instead of Mal. Big mistake.

Mal clocked him in the jaw, half power, not wanting to kill him accidentally. Unfortunately, that just reminded him of the terrible thing he’d done to Abby before he’d left the vehicle, and, distracted, he took a hard punch to the temple. His eyes glazed over and he fought the blackness fraying the edges of his vision. He couldn’t go down. Abby was depending on him to get her out. Or whatever she needed from him. If anything.

He rubbed the side of his head. “Well, that was just low and dirty. And here I was being sure not to hurt you that much. Way to make me regret my life choices, man.”

The guy just looked at him, perplexed. “Ah, what the hell.” He punched him straight and fast in the guy’s nose. There was a crack and a spurt of blood. He hit it again, tapped it, really, and the man passed out with the pain. Mal was about to run to the barn when he stopped and corrected himself.

He turned back to the prostrate man and put him in the recovery position. Better safe than sorry. God, if his mates from the Regiment could see him now. His old mission was to plow through the enemy and get to the objective. Since he left, it was mainly up to him to decide who the bad guys were. And usually he was all right with that. But damned if putting Abby into the equation didn’t eff things up for him.

He took a breath, shook his head to straighten out his vision, and made for the barn. He pressed himself against the one closed door and listened. At first he heard nothing. He remained still, patient. Then a muffled voice said something. He couldn’t tell if it was a male or female voice, but it didn’t sound like it was coming from the barn itself. There was no way the acoustics would be that strangled in there. He sneaked a fast look around the open door.

No shots at him, so he considered that a win, but he also saw nothing that led him to believe she was in there. If he didn’t hurry, the disabled men could rally, and no one wanted that.

He took a step into the barn and the floor creaked. He paused to see if anyone would jump out from behind the bales of hay. No one did. But when he took another step, a voice called from below the floor.
Oh, okay, so that’s where she is.

The hatch was easy to see, in a way it hadn’t been when he’d first availed himself of shelter there. It had been cleared. There was no way he’d be able to sneak up on someone there, so he decided on surprise. He yanked at the metal handle and pulled it up in one motion. The stairs automatically descended, but he didn’t want to risk the time it would take him to climb down.

He jumped, and it had never felt more like jumping into the pits of hell. Except in this case there was a light at the bottom. And Abby, tied to a chair. And Wank Face. He didn’t know his name, and he wasn’t really concerned with who he was, just that he’d tied up Mal’s girl. So he was Wank Face.

Wank Face looked startled, but he backed up toward Abby, looking like he was about to put a gun to her head. “Don’t even think about it, mate. You do not want to mess with me on that one.”

The bastard took another step toward Abby, but to Mal’s surprise—something he hid well—she leapt to her feet, such as she could, and swung her back to Wank Face so that the legs of the chair she was tied to whacked him in the nuts. Mal winced as he went down. “Come to that, you don’t want to mess with her either. Lesson learned, yeah?” He grasped the front of his uniform jacket and lifted him before punching him in the face, relieving him of the pain in his balls. A mercy knockout.

“I had it handled,” she said.

“Obviously.” He leaned against the wooden steps and waited. “Well, come on, then, we’ve got to get out of here.” He started up the stairs with a grin that she couldn’t see.
One, two
—

“Will you stop being an ass and untie me?”

He came back down the steps and put a frown on his face. “I’m sorry, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I absolutely swear, on my mother’s grave, that you just called me an ass and told me that you had all this handled.” He gestured around the room and made to go up again.

“You—” She was seriously mad enough to jump up and down on the chair as if she was just trying to pull herself free.

“Ask nicely,” he said.

“Please will you untie me?” she said between her teeth.

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘thank you for rescuing me; now will you please untie me, my hero? Please.’ I’m not sure that’s too hard under the circumstances, is it?”

“It’s your fucking fault I’m here,” she said, pulling at her ties again. Jesus. If she didn’t stop doing that, he’d never be able to untie them. He sighed and pulled his knife out.

“What do you mean it’s my fault?” he asked, sawing through the ties binding one hand. He thought he’d better get the answer before untying the second hand.

“What you told me in the car. I was too scared to fight back when they grabbed me. In case I hurt one of them.” Her voice was as low as his heart was close to breaking.

He cut the second rope and pulled her up off the chair and straight into his arms. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. I shouldn’t have told you, and if me doing that had got you really hurt, I’d never have forgiven myself.”

“I’m going to remind you about that, but how about I torture you someplace else? How about we make a break for the town?”

“Deal.” Getting her away from all this was what every molecule of his blood wanted to do.

No longer scared of drawing attention to themselves, they ran for the vehicle, after she’d stopped and grabbed Wank Face’s gun. “I’ll drive,” Mal said as they reached the armored car. To ward off her objections, he rescued his phone from the corner beam and handed it to her. “You talk, I’ll drive.” She threw herself into the car and fastened her seat belt.

“I’m taking you back to town?” he asked as he shifted the vehicle into gear.