Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6 (8 page)

Josh slanted a stern look at him, but shook his head. “She isn’t going to cut you loose.”

“She should,” Dingo admitted. “I buggared our deal by coming out here without telling her, but I have to find out if Satan’s Garden Club has anyone in it from before. Anyone who might know about Valene.”  He blew out a rush of air and changed the subject. “I may not make the tux fitting.”

Josh had stood and started across the room. He halted at that and swung around on Dingo. “Yes, you will, because Trish and I aren’t getting married without you and Sabrina there, so don’t fuck this up any more than it is.”

Dingo scowled. “I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want to delay your wedding.”

“Do you think Trish will go ahead with it if you aren’t there after she made us wait until Ryder got out of prison? I’m ready to marry her and none of you are fucking this up, especially you.” 

Ryder had been wrongly accused of murder and Trish refused to get married while she knew the team needed to focus on getting him out, which had turned dicey.

Ironically, Ryder ended up married to the FBI agent with the best case against him, while Josh was still not married to Trish.

Seeing Josh all hacked about waiting to get married would be funny if Dingo didn’t care, but he did. He’d taken off all those years ago on Valene without a word. He couldn’t do that to Josh. “I’m just letting you know that I’m not leaving LA until I’m convinced Valene is safe.”

“Then get convinced soon, because your ass has to be in Miami in three weeks to get fitted.”

Dingo waved Josh to get moving. Surely he could figure out if there was a real threat to Valene and still be in Miami in time for the fitting.

They walked into Sabrina’s office, where she paced. The minute Josh closed the door, she rounded on Dingo. “You have got to get your head out of your ass and stop playing white knight to someone who doesn’t care.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Sabrina.”  Dingo crossed his arms, ready to have this out. “I’m sorry for not telling you but this attitude is exactly why I didn’t.”

“Oh, this isn’t attitude,” she warned him. “This is all-out furious. There is nothing in the intelligence chatter about any of Garcia’s old team getting back together. Not a word on the street. Why are you overreacting?”

Was he overreacting? “I’m being proactive. That’s all.”

She looked at Josh. “You can jump in and help anytime.”

“Neither one of you will like what I have to say.”

“Try me,” Sabrina said.

Josh sat down on one of the three leather chairs grouped across the room from a corner computer desk. “You have to leave Dingo alone to make his own mistakes.”

Her mouth opened and closed. “Lot of good you are.”

“I tried to warn you.”

“Thanks, mate,” Dingo told Josh, glad to see someone got what was going on.

“Don’t thank me,
mate
.”  Josh turned to Dingo. “She’s got a valid point on the SGC. Your coming out here without telling Sabrina, or me, was bullshit. What you had with Valene is over and there’s no viable threat, so this is you wanting her back. Nothing more, and you’re headed down a path that might really destroy you this time.”

Dingo grabbed his head with both hands. “You two need to both stay out of my business.”

“Not going to happen,” Sabrina snapped. “I will not stand by and watch you put yourself through that again. You two wouldn’t stand by while I committed emotional suicide.”

Dingo dropped his hands, glad for the new direction he could take in this warped conversation. “Oh, you mean like getting intel from Gage Laughton?”

If she’d expected that, she might have been able to cover her reaction, but her face broadcasted guilty-as-charged right before she shut it down. She’d been busted, but she held her head up defiantly. “You know I get intel from a lot of places. That doesn’t change the validity.”

“It does for me,” Dingo corrected her.

“That’s your problem.”

“I’ll tell you what my problem is. You expecting me to sit here and run the operation from this place when you have plenty of qualified personnel to do that and I’m of more use on the street.”

“You don’t get a say in how I run this op.”

“And you don’t get a say in how I run my life,” he shoved back at her.

“You two sound like you did when we were kids,” Josh noted.

Sabrina and Dingo both said, “Shut up.”

Josh lifted his hands. “Never mind.”

Dingo was done with this. “You can run the show any way you want, but expecting me to sit here when I can be out tracking information on SGC is stupid.”

“Way to go calling her stupid,” Josh muttered.

“Want to talk stupid?” Sabrina asked. “Stupid is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.”

Dingo caught her meaning about him seeing Valene again, but he was done discussing Valene. And he was done fighting with Sabrina. “What’s it going to take to call a truce, Sabrina?”

“Did you find Pete?”

“No.”

She was silent, looking at him while she considered her answer. “If I give you time right now to go convince yourself that this woman is not under threat, can you do that and come back with your head in the right position and do your part on this team?”

As in his head not up his ass? He wanted to believe he could do that, so he said, “Yes.”

“Okay, here’s my truce. You do that and be back here by midnight, get a decent night’s sleep and be ready to roll before daylight. If not, then our only other option is to contact the FBI and tell them Eklund’s in danger from a past operation. They’ll put her in protective custody and keep her there until we can determine if the threat is real.” 

If Dingo thought Valene would go willingly into WITSEC, he’d have suggested that first thing yesterday. He’d hoped she would consider taking a few days to stay out of sight in a safe place he chose, but she’d said she was caring for someone sick. Convincing her to hand that responsibility over to someone else would be much tougher than taking her away from work. She was loyal as the day was long. If Dingo called the FBI in to take Valene into protective custody and away from someone depending on her, she’d want blood.

Shit. This was not what he wanted, but this was also an argument he couldn’t win. “If I say I don’t want anyone to interfere, you’ll still do what you want.”

“Before you get pissed at me–”

“Too late,” he muttered, drawing a sharp look before Sabrina continued.

“I’m being generous when I want to have
you
in lock down. I know you’ll go to her no matter what I say. When you do, ask her about her friend Charlie.”

Josh said, “Sabrina!”

“Don’t Sabrina me. Dingo needs to know.”

Dingo’s gaze bounced from Josh to Sabrina. “Know what?”

“That Valene may not be as innocent as you think. She’s doing business with a man whose background of being an international antiquities broker doesn’t pan out.”

“You’ve been investigating Valene?” Dingo asked, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“You’re sure as hell not objective about her or you’d have found out. You’d be thinking like an operative and not with your dick.”

“Who’s Charlie?” Dingo asked.

“I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself, but here’s a tip. With the exception of our generous payment for services rendered four weeks ago, Valene hasn’t deposited over a thousand dollars in her checking account at one time in the past year. Yet a fifty thousand dollar deposit just hit her account today.”

“So now she can’t earn a living?” Dingo snapped. If he was not objective, a fair accusation, then Sabrina was prejudiced against Valene, an equally fair assessment. Sabrina would love nothing better than to find something on Valene that would send Valene far away from Dingo.

“It was from an offshore bank. Who pays for anything legal through offshore banks, Dingo?”

That did surprise him, but while most people moving money to offshore accounts were either dodging taxes or dealing in nefarious ventures, that still did not mean that Valene had committed any crime. In fact, he’d be shocked if some of the high rollers she’d dealt with years ago didn’t hide money offshore.

Hell, Slye had numerous offshore accounts they could pull from in emergencies if they were out of the country, not to mention money stashed in foreign banks for quick access when they were on ops, but mentioning that would get him nowhere.

Sabrina was worse than a bulldog with a meaty bone. She kept gnawing at him. “That should raise red flags on her if you’d take off your blinders. But I’m willing to hear a reasonable explanation if you can produce one.”

Dingo swung his gaze to Josh who said, “Sorry, Dingo, but what Sabrina said is true.”

“You both went behind my back to dig around on Valene? How would you feel if I took it on myself to go snooping into your fiancé’s business, or her brother’s, without saying a word to you first?”  Then he turned on Sabrina. “What about Gage? We’ve never pulled out all the stops to go after him and drag his ass to a locked-down location and get some answers? You’re even collaborating with the bastard.”

Josh looked remorseful and ready to explain, but Sabrina pounced and swung the whole thing back on Dingo. “Really? What I do in the best interest of my teams is not up for discussion. You fly out here without a word to let us know where you were. We’re in a business where bodies disappear when people die, and
still
you feel justified in being angry at me for watching your back? If you were even a little objective you’d see her in a different light. If you’re so sure she’s at risk from SGC, then why hasn’t anyone gotten to her yet?”

Dingo couldn’t answer that. He’d been too thankful every minute that no one had harmed Valene to look at all this any other way. Sabrina was right about one thing. If she wanted him to believe Valene was guilty of something criminal, then he wasn’t the least-bit open minded.

But having a handful of suspicious details rammed in his face made it hard to ignore what Sabrina had said.

He had to accept her challenge and force Sabrina to stop making Valene out to be someone bad. He couldn’t do that without information.

It sickened him to treat Valene the way he’d treat a perp and have to dig around for dirt on her. That meant tossing her in with the rest of the garbage rotting in his soul. Being with Valene in the past had been like stepping out of all this filth and blood and into somewhere full of light and life.

Before he flipped the switch in his head that would turn her into just one more name and set of details, before he destroyed what she meant to him, he had to get out of here and clear his head.

He stood there, fighting to keep from letting words out that could never be unheard. He told Sabrina, “The truce stands until five in the morning. Don’t call me. Don’t come near me. In the meantime, stay out of my business and Valene’s life, and just for the record,” he said, pointing at himself. “This isn’t anger. This is bone-deep disappointment in the two people I trusted most.”

He walked out of the silent room, unsure what his next move was, because Sabrina had succeeded at something he’d have never thought possible, or he wouldn’t have taken a bullet seven years ago to gain Garcia’s attention.

Sabrina had succeeded at shaking his faith in Valene.

Chapter 9

Valene walked up the third-floor flight of creaking, wooden steps to her apartment and tried to come to terms with facing yet another part of her past.

Like Dingo wasn’t enough for one day,

Noise across the hall from her door sounded as though her neighbors were listening to the baseball game, a regular Wednesday night event in the lives of normal people.

Normal was boring.

She’d keep telling herself that and ignore the fact that she was exhausted but her day wasn’t done. Not when she had yet to receive one positive reply from all the calls she’d made.

It wasn’t as though she had an endless supply of resources. With enough time, she could locate new ones to make up for the one she’d been avoiding, but Smith’s deadline loomed heavier by the minute.

There’d been no word on the artifact from any of her best sources. She was going to have to suck it up and ask for help from the one person who could absolutely help her.

He also happened to be the one person she absolutely wanted to avoid.

In truth, he didn’t want to see her either. Her ex-husband, Henri Roche, met all her resource qualifications of being discreet, of being local, and of being well connected in the high-end antiques community.

But the number one reason she needed him? He had an in-house expert on Galileo who would know if someone was shopping this specific scroll.

She was damn good in her field, but her ego could admit that Henri’s expert knew more about Galileo.

Plus Henri needed the money.

But would that be enough to convince him to work with her when they weren’t even on speaking terms?

She’d gone to her next-best source, whose expert was a couple of steps down from Henri’s, but Aram had already locked that source up for some special project.

Please tell me Aram is not involved with the scroll.

The key stuck in her tarnished door lock. Again. She jiggled it, cursed it, beat on it and finally the lock gave in to her threats.

With the sun clocking out for another day, her apartment was barely navigable through the swath of shadows. She preferred that over bright lights shining across a home that reminded her of how much she’d lost in recent years. She’d never been able to call this place shabby chic because the few pieces of furniture she owned now were just crap.

Can’t dress up crap by changing the name.

She headed toward the kitchen, but stopped in her tracks. A light filtered from the opening.

That hadn’t been on this morning.

She didn’t leave
any
lights on. She was as miserly spending money for her own benefit as a retiree on a tight pension. Every dollar she saved was one more dollar she could use to keep her dad in decent care.

Stepping back out of the doorway to pull her Walther .380 from her purse, she did a quick sweep of the space around her and slipped silently toward the kitchen.
I’m going to feel like an idiot sneaking up on an empty room.

When she peeked around the corner, no one was there.

Thunking her forehead with her gun hand, she placed the weapon back into her purse and yawned. Maybe she
had
left the stove vent light on. Her front door had been locked and even
she
couldn’t get in the place with a key some days. She tossed her purse on the counter and turned toward the bedroom.

She was dead tired, but this was only a pit stop for a shower before she faced Henri if he was still at work. Yes, she was vain enough to want to look smoking when she walked into his shop.

He’d been the one to bail on their marriage.

She didn’t have a lot of pride left when it came to doing whatever was required to insure her father survived, but she would not suffer Henri’s pity when she faced him.

Not when he was blissfully happy in his new relationship.

She unzipped her pants, stepping out of them on the way to her bedroom, and undid the buttons on her jacket. Second time wearing that outfit. She’d have to bite the bullet and drop it at the dry cleaners.

She dropped the clothes next to the dresser on her left as soon as she entered her dark bedroom, a place even more depressing than the rest of this dump.

She’d made two steps toward the bathroom and had reached around to unclip her bra when she heard, “Stop, Valene.”

Her brain froze with instinctive fear for two seconds. That was all it took for her mind to sort through the voices she’d heard today and pin the tail on that donkey. “What the hell is it with you?”

When she turned around, her eyes had adjusted to make out a shape in the corner. He was propped against the wall with his arms crossed, just the way he’d been the last time she’d found him in her bedroom. That was a long time and a river of heartache ago.

Long enough that her body shouldn’t go into happy-to-see-Dingo mode just because he was four steps away.

Four steps and seven years.

“I need to talk to you, Val.”

She’d held onto her composure and a tide of emotions balled up inside her from the first time she’d seen him today, but he’d caught her off guard, showing up here.

“Now?” she said. “No. You had your chance
years
ago and you couldn’t waste the time to call me and tell me you were leaving. No more talking. I’m so over this you have no idea.”

She was so lying he had no idea.

Her throat was tight with wanting to yell at him for breaking her heart, even after all this time. She hadn’t been nearly as hurt when Henri told her the marriage was over.

And no, she didn’t want to think about how wrong that sounded.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back then, but I couldn’t.”

She wanted to pretend this didn’t matter, that just hearing his voice didn’t brush pleasure across her mind the way his hands used to stroke her skin. But seeing him again, even in this crummy bedroom in her crappy apartment, stirred up memories she’d failed to bury after all.

But she had just enough pride left to shut him down.

“You know what, Dingo? I don’t give a damn about you being sorry now. I don’t believe you couldn’t call me. I don’t care what happened back then. I moved on.”

The shadow shape of Dingo moved as though he lifted away from the wall. “You got married as soon as I left.”

“It was almost a
year
later!”  Why had she said that? She wasn’t the one who had to apologize.

“Didn’t take you long to forget me.”

The sound of longing in his voice struck hard, but he didn’t get to question her choices, no matter how bad they’d been in retrospect. “It wasn’t as though you ever wanted any more, Dingo, so what’s your point?” she asked, sounding flippant to cover the pained sounds her heart was making.

~*~

Dingo unfolded his arms to tuck his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He had to keep them from reaching for her to soothe the pain she kept trying to hide with her words.

He’d never forgive himself for what he did to her, but until now he’d fooled himself into thinking she might.

“What’s the matter, Dingo? Cat got your tongue or don’t you have a point to make?”

He had something to say, but if he started on that right now it would end with her calling him a liar, or with the two of them tangled up in bed like past fights always ended.

His gaze strayed to the bed again.

What had happened to her luxury apartment downtown? And all the beautiful antiques she’d constantly brought home to enjoy before she sold them?

Guilt chipped away at him, laughing at his honor for not delving into Valene’s personal life. Part of it had been that he truly wouldn’t invade her privacy any more than he’d invade someone’s mind if he could read minds.

The other part that would have stopped him even if he hadn’t cared about her privacy?

Fear of turning what was left of his heart into a black stump incapable of feeling anything.

But damn, look at this place.

The only thing antique in this place might be that miserable lock he’d had a hell of a time picking. That reminded him he wasn’t here to explain what happened when he’d disappeared years ago. Much as he’d like to deal with that now and clear the air, the one thing he’d learned from back then was to give Valene as little information as possible or she’d dig up a death sentence.

“You’re right, Val. I admit that I never gave you reason to think any more was ever going to happen between us than late night rendezvous.”

She looked away, squinting her eyes shut tight.

Still hurting.

Why couldn’t he have Josh’s silver-tongued-devil gift?

What could Dingo do to make this easier for Valene?

She turned back to him, chin jacked up and attitude following close behind. “Now that we have all that cleared up, what exactly do you want so I can get on with my life?”

Nothing had been cleared up, but he’d come here with a plan. Much as he hated to give credence to what Sabrina had said, he wasn’t leaving without finding out about Charlie. “I was serious this morning. I’m worried about you, Val.”

“Oh, puhlease! You can’t pull this crap just because you don’t like seeing me with another man.”

Ouch.
Who knew a heart could talk?

Was she with somebody else? “Are you involved with someone?”

“That’s really none of your business is it?”

No, but that didn’t stop the idea of her with someone else from eating at him. “Fine. You’re right. None of my business who you’re shagging.”

“I didn’t say I was–”

“You’re not?” Damn. Had he really asked that?

She crossed her arms and squared her jaw. “You are so annoying. What do you want?”

You.
He clamped his lips shut to keep from allowing that word to climb out and screw this up any worse. “I just want you to be safe. If you’re, uh, seeing someone, then he might be at risk too.”  Like if the buggar touched Val when Dingo was watching.

“I knew it.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “What?”

“You’re stalking me and Charlie, aren’t you?”

“Charlie? Who’s he?” Dingo forced himself to stay put and not beat his head against the wall. That would be easier than encouraging her to talk about being with another man.

She doesn’t belong to you.
Got it.

“Charlie’s my best client right now.”

“How much do you know about this client?”  Sure, he could pretend that he was hunting intel to do with his mission, but the truth is he was a sick bastard who wanted to know just who had taken his place this time.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t know whatever Sabrina knew, and maybe more, the minute Dingo got a little time with his laptop.

“I know everything I need to know about Charlie,” she stonewalled. “We work together a lot, or do you already know that by snooping on me?”

He wanted to shout at her that she was being too trusting, but then she’d turn that one on Dingo. He pushed off the wall. “How often do you work together? Like today?”

Valene must have taken his move as a signal for combat. She surged forward, shouting, “You can
not
come in here and ask me questions about my life or who I see for lunch.”

Dingo didn’t want her to throw him out, but if she pushed it, he’d leave. Then what? He couldn’t tell her about Satan’s Garden Club or she’d dive into that with both feet and draw their attention for sure. “I’m not stalking you, Val, but the group that Giuseppe was connected to has resurfaced. There’s a chance they might snatch you off the street.”

That got her attention. “Why would they come after me now when no one cared seven years ago?”

How could he tell her that he’d taken a bullet and suffered much worse so that Garcia would leave her alone? Then he’d have to tell her why he’d done all that. She’d be devastated with guilt because she’d feel responsible.

Hadn’t he hurt her enough? “I can’t answer that, because I don’t know what this group is after. My people are hunting them.”  He let that sink in.

“I’ll ask the police to make some rounds here.”

“If they come for you, the police won’t stop them.”

“What about if they come for you?”  She crossed her arms, giving him a look much like Sabrina’s.

“I’m prepared, because this is what I do. But I’m concerned about
your
safety so I’m just asking how long you’ve known this guy.” 

“Long enough.”

Dingo changed his tactics. “These people can infiltrate a lot of places. You don’t want to find out you’ve been dealing with a criminal, do you?”

She dropped her arms and curled her fists. “Charlie is
not
a criminal. I investigated him myself and checked his references. Don’t you dare come here threatening him,” she closed the distance between them, getting right up in his face. “I’m trained in two different martial arts. I’m a damn good shot. This sounds like smoke and mirrors. Unless you have hard evidence to show me, do not screw up my relationship with this client or I will not be responsible for my actions. Do you get that?”