Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6 (7 page)

“I believe Rikker’s involved.”

“How? When you and I talked in Atlanta last year–”

“You mean when you finally came out of hiding?” he interjected.

She ignored the taunt. “You originally told me Rikker had been tracking the Orion Hunters. Now you’re telling me he’s involved with them?”

“Possibly.”  He laid it out for her. “We found a dead Orion Hunter in Atlanta two days ago who fits the description of the one who killed Bergman.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash at Gage knowing that. He was in the business of information and clearly had resources working stateside on this specific case. “How do you know it was an Orion Hunter?”

“He had intentional scarring on his neck that matched the Orion star configuration found on one of the people busted in the ring attempting to destroy the aquifer.”

Her skin felt clammy. What had Dingo stumbled into with Bergman?

Gage squeezed her hand gently and she felt it all the way up her arm and into her chest. He asked, “Want to tell me what Dingo discussed with Bergman?”

“Not particularly.”

“Information goes both ways.”

This was the Gage she knew during missions, the one who could squeeze a name out of a dead body. “You’re way behind in the sharing department, Laughton.”

He grimaced and went on. “I’m about to share something with you that no one in the CIA knows. No one in any government agency knows, not unless they’re involved, so I need you to tell me that you won’t share this even with Josh and Dingo.”

“Are you serious?”

“You want information? I’m bringing it, but it comes with that price.”

“I promised them they could be a part of the takedown when we found Rikker.”

“
I
didn’t make that promise,” Gage said, not giving on this. “You can’t tell them until it’s time to act. And you’re not in any position to do that right now, but with the three of you out here, I don’t want anyone muddying the water when we finally have a break. You have to keep what I tell you confidential until I give the word that it’s on. Deal?”

He dangled Rikker in front of her nose and she couldn’t let that pass. “Deal.”

“First, Rikker was recently seen in LA.”

Her blood pressure zoomed up so fast it should have blown the top off her head. “
Where
?”

“Downtown on another traffic cam, but it’s not a good shot and it was ten days ago. He may be in another country by now, but I think he’s still stateside.”

Now she got it. The information wasn’t that Rikker was around, but why he was still here. “What’s he up to?”

“I’m not sure yet, but I need you to know everything I do right now so that you don’t walk into a trap. The Orion Hunter who killed Bergman was found dead with both eyes shot out. That was Rikker’s MO. The agency warned him about making signature kills, but Rikker’s ego had to be fed constantly. He wanted his hits known.”

“That’s what a serial killer does. Why would he do that?”

“Because he
is
a serial killer who’s a legend in his own mind. He wanted the reputation of being the agency’s deadliest asset.”

Her mind tossed all this new information in on top of what she already knew and sorted pieces, shoving them into categories, drawing lines and making connections. Was Rikker with the Orion Hunters or after them for some reason?

“Why do we need to keep all this secret?” 

“You can tell your people you have intel that the Orion Hunters might be involved in the hits, but don’t share the tie to Rikker, because he’s making mistakes and he thinks no one is catching them.” 

How could he ask her to let this opportunity pass? “Gage, think about it. I could put together an ace team and–”

Gage stepped over every invisible boundary she’d thrown between them when he slid his hand into her hair, crowding her personal space and pulling them together.

She could feel the tension in him when he took a breath and let it out carefully, along with his words.

“You’re one of most skilled operatives I’ve ever known, but the deeper I dig the more terrifying this all becomes. The people connected to this are in-their-own-league powerful. There’s no way to prove their connections. It’s more of a gut feeling I have as I push the pieces around. I told you I only trust two people in the agency right now and they’re not a part of my division. I haven’t told you much before now because I feared you’d go tearing off after a lead and uncover something you wouldn’t survive.”

She couldn’t think with him so close.

His gaze roamed over her face, tracing every inch the way a blind man reads a shape with his hands. He kept talking in that low, seductive voice that wrapped around her mind and shut the world out.

“I know who
wasn’t
involved and those are the names you want. This runs deep and giving you names might have gotten innocent people killed, but more than that I care about what happens to you. And if you went after the agency personnel the way I know you, Josh and Dingo would, I’d learn about it when your bodies turned up. I’d eventually find the bastards doing all of this, but it would be for naught without you here. I’m so afraid of losing you again.”

This man feared nothing, or so she’d thought.

He’d fought his way out of third-world hot spots where he should have died. She’d hated when he went dark for months, but it had been part of his job just as going on missions had been hers.

To him, she’d gone dark for two years and she’d felt justified the entire time.

Until this moment.

Her resolve splintered and ripped apart, shattering under the weight of what she’d done to Gage. She’d been so sure he had known who did this to her and the team, that she couldn’t just pick up where they’d left off. But Gage had taken his time, inching his way back inside her heart, slowly piecing it back together from the devastation she’d suffered at believing he shielded those responsible for the hell she and her people had gone through.

Like grasping at leaves scattering from a tree in autumn, she tried to hold onto her righteous anger and came up empty.

Gage had brought her information on Rikker and she believed him. If she didn’t reach out now, right now, she might as well walk away for good, because she couldn’t keep doing this.

Seeing the pain peeking out from behind his stoic calm hurt her heart.

And shoving all the broken parts of her together every day to do her job to protect the world and her people was getting harder.

She placed her hand on top of his.

That action alone changed everything between them.

She whispered, “I didn’t disappear to hurt you.”

“I know that, but...”

She finished the sentence in her mind.
But for two years I thought you were dead.

And he’d mourned her.

She saw his grief in his eyes and felt it in her soul. She’d never stopped believing in him. She’d tried, oh how she’d tried and fought to keep her distance from him, because she owed that to her team. To Josh and Dingo.

But what about Gage?
I would never have doubted you.

His words stomped on her defenses and forced her to stop laying all the blame at his feet. Pushed her to see him as the man she’d once believed in.

He pulled her to him and said, “For once, stop thinking so damn hard.” Then he covered her mouth with his and her world spun out of control. She lost her anchor to reality, floating in space with no sense of up or down.

Just Gage everywhere she touched and tasted.

She gripped his shirt to keep him from pulling away and gave back with all her pent-up longing. Everything she felt for him exploded with that kiss. Her heart squeezed tight, pounding at the feel of his hands racing over her hair and down her shoulder to her breast.

Her body turned into a ball of fire, hungry for oxygen. One touch from him and she’d go up in flames.

Gage kept reaching for her and the world blurred until the only thing in focus was the love she still felt.

He pushed for more, kissing her throat and running his fingers over her cheek. “God, I miss you. Miss just being with you.”

She should have had a crazy happy moment at hearing those words, because being without him was killing her. He’d brought her Rikker so why did she feel so torn with guilt?

Because every time Gage knocked down another wall to get to her it felt as though she was letting Josh and Dingo down to indulge her Gage craving.

Gage’s fingers went under her knit top and ... she clinched her thighs against the streak of heat that rushed through her.

“Gage, I...don’t.” 

He dropped his head to hers, breathing hard, and moved his hand from her breast.

At that moment, she wanted to hurt everybody and everything that kept them apart.

He sounded sincerely remorseful when he said, “I didn’t intend for this to happen.”

She snorted.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not sorry,” he said, a smile coming through in his voice. “I really am trying to give you room, but I don’t think being apart is working for either of us. You want to be with me. I want to be with you. Why can’t we be together back in Atlanta? I can insert into your house with no one knowing. What would be the harm in that? Give us a chance to figure this out together.”

She heard what he was saying.

He would keep their secret safe if she opened the door to him again. That was so damned tempting and her backbone was jelly soft when he was this close to her.

“Say yes.” He kissed her tenderly and she heard herself murmur, “Yes.”

The kiss he laid on her next was in a whole new level of hot.

Guilt kept thumping at her and she slammed her mind shut to it.

She appreciated Gage’s offer not to put her on the spot by keeping his presence secret when she went home, but she couldn’t do it behind Josh and Dingo’s backs, which meant she’d have to tell them.

Their friendship had never been put to this kind of test and she hoped it would weather the storm coming, because she couldn’t imagine life without either Josh or Dingo.

Chapter 8

Dingo slung his arm over the empty chair next to him in the underground meeting room of Sabrina’s LA safe house number four, counting minutes until this meeting was finished. Sabrina had spent the past hour locked away in her temporary office while the team settled in, but she was ready to start the show.

This war room wasn’t quite the high-tech one back in Atlanta at Slye Temp headquarters, but planning a mission often had less to do with the location or equipment and everything to do with the people involved.

Tension filled every corner and surface in the room.

Sabrina stood at the head of a table that seated ten. At twenty-seven, she’d accomplished more in the dark world of black ops than many had by their mid-thirties. She’d been pretty as a street rat, but once she turned into a beautiful woman with shoulder-length black hair, honey-brown skin and exotic eyes, men started making fools of themselves. Her male agents knew better and respected her for the deadly weapon she could be.

She did not tolerate fools or anyone stupid enough to cross her, which made Dingo lucky she thought of him as a brother. He owed her his best, and generally gave it without question, but he’d let her down yesterday and had to fix that.

His mind finally caught up to what she was saying. For the benefit of the other agents present, she shared everything they’d learned from intel collected by Dingo and Tanner at the Bergman meeting and afterward.

Sitting across from him and closer to Sabrina, Tanner propped his big upper body with both elbows on the table and seemed less than engaged, but that would only fool someone unfamiliar with the cowboy. He had an easy smile and sharp eyes. Part of his skill set included the ability to talk like he’d just come in off a cattle drive while taking in everything around him, all without showing any sign of listening.

Dingo was surprised to see White Hawk sitting next to Tanner, since she tended to sit apart from any of the men, plus Sabrina had been judicious about where she sent the relatively new team member. White Hawk could be a twenty-something woman from any middle class neighborhood, with blunt-cut black hair, no makeup, long-sleeved, buttoned shirt and jeans that fit without looking like a glove.

But the high cheeks, broad forehead, and honey-brown skin proclaimed her Native American heritage in spite of green eyes.

She’d come to Slye Temp via a Navajo friend of Sabrina’s who had done a damn good job training the young woman. No one could shadow a target on foot the way White Hawk could. She had an impressive ability to fade into the background.

Nick Carrera’s fidgeting pulled Dingo’s attention to his immediate left where the dark Sicilian was a tough read. Nick wore fatigues with the same comfort as a custom tailored tuxedo. He had an uncanny knack for coming up with necessary intel at the strangest times and if his team got cornered, Nick would find a way out. It might involve a lot of destroyed property and pissing off the wrong people, but he had yet to fail at bringing everyone on his team home alive.

Ryder Van Dyke held his lean frame with a lethal stillness that came from being a former Army sniper. He lifted his silver-gray eyes from time to time, wrote notes and occasionally ran a hand over his brown hair, cut so short he couldn’t mess it up. Lifting a finger to interrupt, he waited for Sabrina’s nod to ask, “If Satan’s Garden Club is behind the assassinations, do we have any idea if any of them are part of the original SGC?”

Sabrina’s gaze lit on Dingo and he lifted an eyebrow.

She said, “We have no intel confirming it. At this point, we’re working on the premise that it’s a new group of copycats.”  She asked Dingo, “Have you anything different to add?”

When she got her back up she was a pain to deal with. He said, “No.”

“Good. Moving on.”

Damian “Blade” Singleton walked in, surprising Dingo. He hadn’t thought the medic would make this trip.

That showed what Dingo knew.

If you mapped out Blade’s face, it would be an intersection of Middle Eastern and African American. His eyelashes were so thick his dark brown eyes looked black, and he was always watching, studying everyone around him.

Blade said in his easy doctor voice, “I just picked up the extra medical supplies. What did I miss?”

Ryder gave a brief run down, bullet pointing what Sabrina had been going over.

Sabrina picked up from there. “The FBI has handed over the lead on this until we have something more specific.”

Nick said, “They’re probably glad to dump this on us with the pope traveling around the country.”

“Exactly. I filled them in on the three initials Bergman supplied and they’ve passed me what information they have, which points at Eva Perdido as being one of the targets. Perdido’s campaign manager has been in contact with FBI about threats she’s received and notes from a stalker. The most recent stalker note indicated he would be at a large charity event to support her tomorrow.” 

“The
Save the Hollywood Pacific Theater
fundraiser?” Nick asked.

“That one.” Sabrina used a remote to bring an image up on the monitor behind her and stepped to the side. “This is Perdido.”

Dingo had seen her sound bites on television. She’d make a prime target since she’d pissed off a lot of people with her extremist position. She had black hair styled sharply around her Latino face, expressive eyes, and a shapely body she used to her advantage in every photo op. Not a woman who rang any of his chimes.

Maybe that’s because Valene was taking up all his mental space these days.

Tanner tapped a pen on his notes. “She must be the first set of initials. F.E.P.”

White Hawk said, “What does the F stand for?”

“Francine Eva Perdido,” Tanner answered. “Word is that she hates her first name and doesn’t allow anyone on staff to use it.”

Sabrina added, “If she is the target, then the fundraiser is the next public outing where she’s expected.”

Ryder offered, “Assassins don’t usually send advance notice of a hit.”

“Agreed,” Sabrina told him. “No one’s putting a lot of stock into the stalker being a shooting threat, but we have nothing matching the other two initials of O.N.C. and P.G.C. so we start with what we have.”

“I heard Warbucks was going to be there,” Nick said. “He brings his own security. It’ll be like working around the secret service.” 

Billionaire Jon Tinker had been nicknamed Daddy Warbucks by the press due to his philanthropic ventures and the business enterprises he created after becoming a Lieutenant Colonel and adopting three kids. None were named Annie, though.

“Sorry I’m late to the party,” Josh Carrington said, breezing in. “But I’m up to speed on SGC and the initials slated for assassination.”

Dingo sat up. What the hell was Josh doing here? He should be thousands of miles away in Miami with his fiancé, getting ready for a wedding in three and a half weeks.

Josh had perfectly groomed tawny hair and the look of a man suited to be heir apparent to massive family wealth, the result of an adoption gone right in his late teens, but he wore that look with the same nonchalance he did jeans and a T-shirt. And he was a man you wanted watching your back when bullets were flying. He hung up the sport coat, leaving him in a button-down shirt and slacks better suited for a multi-million dollar negotiation, which might be the case with a Carrington.

Dingo could never deal with the many trappings that were part of Josh’s life, but his best friend handled it all with ease and still managed to be a deadly operative.

Without a look in Dingo’s direction as Josh sat down, Sabrina said, “Thanks for coming in. We’re going to be stretched thin on this one.”

Josh caught Dingo staring and shrugged as if to say this was what happened when duty called and his fiancé understood.

No, that would not fly. Dingo had to talk to him later.

Sabrina continued. “I made arrangements for the charity event. The team will go undercover as part of the wait staff and additional security. I’m in discussions with event security and Tinker’s. As a gubernatorial candidate for California, Perdido has her own personnel, but we believe she’s one of the three targets based on intel we’ve receive in the last twenty-four hours. She’s tried to keep the stalker issue quiet–”

Dingo lifted a hand and Sabrina stiffened. “Yes?”

Good thing he was sitting on the opposite side of the table from her or he’d have gotten frostbite. “Has Perdido been informed that her life is at risk and going to a public venue is unwise?”

“Yes, but her campaign manager says she’s been under threat for months and will not allow cowards to turn her into one. That’s a quote.”

He nodded and she arched a don’t-interrupt-me-again eyebrow.

Man, was she pissed.

Josh shoved a narrowed look at Dingo that raised a feeling he hadn’t experienced since being a kid in trouble.

What the hell?

Back then Sabrina would be somewhere close, radiating tension as she plotted a way to save Dingo from whatever punishment he couldn’t avoid. At the same time, Josh would be sending Dingo a series of completely undecipherable facial expressions to hint at which lie was the best one to offer.

Thankfully, Josh had finally realized finger signals were far more effective than his nonexistent telepathic ability, but Sabrina still hadn’t learned that she couldn’t save Dingo or Josh from whatever messes they walked into with eyes wide open.

The truth was that she refused to accept that Dingo couldn’t be saved from himself.

He would never have the life Josh, the crazy bastard, had ahead of him, or know what it was like with a woman who loved him the way Trish loved Josh, but that was fine.

Dingo had learned a long time ago not to want what others had, like a family and someone to call his own. He shook his head at wandering down that thought trail, and gave up guessing what was going on with Sabrina and Josh. Good or bad, he’d find out soon enough.

Who was he kidding?

He knew what to expect just as a condemned man knew when his last minutes drew near.

Dingo had missed nothing Sabrina said so far, but she lifted her voice and swung her gaze to take in everyone. “Tanner, Nick, Blade, Ryder and White Hawk will be working the Perdido event. I have one last thing to tell you that was shared with me in the strictest confidence. The body of the man who killed Bergman was found and identified as having intentional scars that may mean he was an Orion Hunter.”

“Who found the body?” Dingo asked. “And how do they know it’s the same man who killed Bergman?”

“I can’t go into that right now.”

Are you kidding me?
Dingo sat back, trying to figure out where Sabrina would have gotten intel like that, because that meant someone had known about the meet and had tracked the killer who got away.

Fucking Laughton.

Dingo took a closer look at Sabrina. Her jaw was tight from clenching her teeth, a physical tell on her that meant she felt guilty.

Sabrina glared at Dingo for a brief moment.

Dingo lifted his eyebrows in reply.
Yes, I figured out who you’ve been talking to, Sabrina.

She moved on with her instructions. “Tanner, would you ask your resource if this scarring is consistent with being an Orion Hunter?”

That resource would be Soo Jin, the woman Tanner had saved from North Korea, and who had helped Tanner and Dingo last month. She was also the woman no one could know was still alive, or that Tanner had her hidden away somewhere.

Tanner nodded and made a note, then asked, “Are we dealing with the stalker at all or focusing only on a potential assassination attempt?”

“Both,” Sabrina answered. “And we can’t be obvious, which is why we’re entering as staff and additional event security. We don’t want to alert the killer to our presence. The threats to Perdido could be one in the same, but as Ryder pointed out, assassins aren’t known for sending advance notice.”

Nick suggested, “Sounds like the Orion Hunters might be going after Satan’s Garden Club. Maybe the hunters don’t like the SGC showing up in their city again. This might all be tied to a turf war.”

Dingo hoped so, but he didn’t like the new addition of Orion Hunters in the picture.

Sabrina wrapped up the meeting.

Before Dingo could question her leaving him to run the operation from the safe house, Sabrina turned to him and Josh. “You two, in my office in five.”

She strode through the connecting door that led to her private area, a bedroom and office combo, leaving Josh and Dingo to follow.

Dingo asked Josh, “What are you doing here?”

“She called and said she needed the three of us to meet privately. I got here as soon as I could.”

Dingo scratched his chin. “She say anything about being pissed at me?”

“No. Why should she? She’s been pissed at you for the past month.”

“I came out here to check on Valene while Sabrina thought I was catching some sleep.”

“Shit.”

“Yep. She covered with the team, making it sound like she sent me out early, but I was already here when she called me.”