Authors: Nicola Claire
“We need to talk,” Caleb said. “And if Thibault is here, then you can guarantee he isn’t here of his own accord. Someone let him loose.”
And that someone was our boss.
“Why are you here?” I repeated.
“Charles, we’re exposed. Your trigger happy colleagues are itching to finish what they started. Let’s get under cover.”
I raised my Glock, ran a thumb across the safety, and pointed it at his head.
“Why are you here, Caleb?”
He looked down the barrel of the gun, didn’t flinch, didn’t twitch a muscle. His emotionless eyes lifted to mine.
“You don’t have to do this all on your own, Charles,” he whispered. Familiar words of late, but somehow they weren’t as enticing coming from Caleb. “You never did. We were always there, but you never asked. Only once, and even then your handler sent us in to get you.” He sighed, ran a hand through his tousled dark blond hair, making me take a step closer and shift my gun muzzle to press against his chest in warning.
He was wearing a vest, I noticed. The bullet would bruise. Hurt like fuck and even momentarily incapacitate. I needed to move my gun back up to his head. I didn’t.
He smiled. I wanted to scream.
“Don’t you see, Charles?” Caleb said. “We’re family.”
Then a fist came out of nowhere and clocked him on the side of the head.
He spun where he stood, eyes rolling back in their sockets, and slumped to the ground.
Adam stepped forward, glowered down at his prey and growled, “She’s got a new family, fuck-knuckle! Back the fuck off, right now!”
W
atching
Charlie fight had been both magnificent and terrifying. She’d held absolutely nothing back. She’d fought as though the world depended on it, not just her life. She’d shown no fear. Held no punches. Never once stopped to catch her breath or plan her next move. Everything had been so seamless. And so fucking brutal.
Nothing like you see on TV.
And nothing like she’d fought back in the dojo.
Even now, the rest of us were dishevelled and bloodied, dirt covered and bruised. Still catching our breaths. Still piecing the puzzle pieces together. But not Charlie. She’d figured it all out while firing bullets and fighting off a knife wielding Frenchman and rolling around in the dirt. And she’d looked like she could have modelled for Vogue while she’d done it. Yeah well, perhaps the Battle Barbie version of Vogue, but still.
“Tempus fugit, Charles,” the dickhead said, from where he’d come to on the concrete and oh so casually sat watching us. Killer Ken to her Battle Barbie.
I fucking hated him on sight, even if it appeared he might be on our side.
“Ava!” she yelled, holstering her gun and glaring down at the body of Jacques Thibault.
“No need to shout,” a delicate voice replied from the shadows, making every one of us - except the two spooks already in our presence - lift our weapons and aim toward the sound.
Fuck this! My skin was crawling with the need to shoot one of these fuckers in the bloody head.
A small woman walked out from behind the end of the storage units; the
opposite
end to the one the real Caleb Hart had been hiding at. Caramel coloured skin, dark hair tied back in a thick, messy knot at her nape, and a sniper rifle thrown over a narrow shoulder. She wore black combat pants and boots - tiny feet - and a skintight black top under a fitted bulletproof vest. She had black paint under her eyes and a black beanie on her head, which on closer inspection, I realised was some kind of helmet. Her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. Her lips were lifted in a small smirk.
One by one Nick, Jase, Koki and Brook lowered their guns an inch or two; about the same distance as their jaws. Ben, still feeling the effects of the throwing star, held firm. Abi right there with him.
And I didn’t budge a fucking inch.
“Who the fuck are you?” I demanded, gun muzzle trained on her forehead.
“Easy,” Hart warned, fingering his own weapon in its holster. And why hadn’t we disarmed the fucker yet?
Ava, or whatever her name was, smiled wider.
“You do have all the fun, Charlie,” she said in a purr. “Why couldn’t I have been assigned this one.” Her eyes trailed up and down the length of me, her intent obvious.
Any other day, any other lifetime…
I chambered a round and re-aimed.
Her chuckle wasn’t nearly as intriguing as Charlie’s, but I only had that thought for a second, before all cognitive reasoning fled.
Charlie stepped in front of me. Back to my gun, which I immediately lowered, face to the threat. To stop me? Or to protect me?
I moved sideways, freeing up my line of sight, and lifted my gun up again, noting everyone had theirs up as well, including Hart.
Not much of a Mexican standoff. There were six of us, seven if you counted Charlie - and as she hadn’t armed herself again, I sure as shit didn’t - and only two of them.
“Well, this is entertaining,” Ava remarked. Shifting the weight of the rifle into a better position on her shoulder. “But I’ve eaten nothing but ramen noodles and Cheezles for the past few days, and I’d kill for an espresso.” Her smile broadened. “Whoops! Did I say kill?”
No one laughed, but if they were anything like me, they felt a little creeped out by her black humour. This woman was as lethal as Charlie. Evidence of such was lying in a spreading pool of blood and brain matter on the concrete floor at our feet.
“Charlie?” Nick asked, his gun trained on Hart, but I could see his eyes darting towards Ava every few seconds. “Your call,” he added, and I watched stunned as Charlie jerked where she stood. Just a little, maybe not perceptible to anyone else, but I caught it.
She hadn’t expected the trust. And I’m not sure it was freely given. Nick was out of his depth. Two spooks, one of which we’d thought the enemy, and so much fucking confusion about what the hell was going on, meant trust was reserved for now. But assets were available.
Charlie was an asset to us as much as we were her assets too.
“Lower your weapons,” she said, sounding like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. “If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be dead.” She spared a glance down at Thibault’s body and then trained her eyes back on Hart.
Who hadn’t missed her use of pronouns: us.
“Can we do this somewhere else?” he asked. We
were
out in the open and something had to be done with the body.
Charlie nodded. “Koki, Brook,” Nick barked. “Wait here for Pierce.”
“On it boss,” they both said in unison.
“Shall we?” Nick asked, indicating the way to our vehicles with a sweep of his hand.
Hart let his eyes run over Koki and Brook, and then the dead body of Thibault.
“And you can just leave the scene of a crime like that?” he asked, his tone suggesting
he
could, but we sure as hell shouldn’t.
“Pierce knows where to find us,” Nick offered and turned his back on the man. It took balls. I’m not sure I could have done it. But then, he did have five armed ASI operatives ready to gun the motherfucker down if he so much as arched a brow at him.
“Fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Hart said, falling into step beside Charlie. I followed, keeping the rifle toting midget in my sights. Jason and Abi helped Ben along behind us, so it was up to me to pull a pistol on the spooks if they so much as twitched a muscle.
“And what do you know about it?” Charlie asked, voice low, but still carrying.
She was fuming; I’m not sure how I knew it, but I did. Charlie Downes was as irate as I’d ever seen her, and to look at her, you wouldn’t even know it.
“I know you know something,” he murmured. “And I know people are not happy about whatever it is you know.”
Charlie didn’t say anything, but I could imagine her mind whirring. She knew about the Director. Did Hart and his sniper sidekick? She knew about the Chinese drugs. About their new distribution and change of management. She knew everything that had led her to us and us to her. But she did not know why Hart was here.
I glanced across the way to Ava, who was humming a tune under her breath as though she hadn’t a care in the world. The rifle was impressive. This little woman who wielded it was not. A surprise, yes. A diminutive bombshell, for sure. But why was she here?
Charlie had mentioned she’d called in back-up, but the back-up had fled. I narrowed my eyes at the woman, unsure what to make of that. She’d abandoned Charlie; she deserved a knock to the head for that.
But she’d come back. Why?
“If you keep eyeballing me like that, big guy,” the woman said, not bothering to turn her head to look at me, “I’ll start to think you’ve got the hots for me.”
Charlie stiffened, but we’d come to the cars by then. The tightness in her shoulders was lost in her halted movement by the first SUV.
“Ava, you’re with Nick, Abi and Ben.” She beeped the lock on the vehicle next to her and climbed in without a further word.
Ava winked at me as she followed Nick towards the second SUV. Hart just offered a contemplative stare.
And Jason, the fucktard, smirked, then murmured under his breath as he passed, “I think she likes you.”
But I couldn’t tell if he meant Ava, whose antics had all been an act.
Or if he’d meant Charlie. Who hadn’t wanted me anywhere near the same car as the sexy sniper was going to be in.
I smiled as I slid into the back seat with Jason, both of us fingering our guns as we watched Hart jump into the front. The tension ratcheted up a notch or two. And didn’t abate as we made our way north to ASI.
So this was Charlie’s family. Two of them at least. I stared at the back of Hart’s skull and mentally dissected it. He’d saved her life once. So had Ava. And here they both were again.
I couldn’t help the feeling of desperation that consumed me, as the SUV made its way on near empty streets.
If they were her family, would that mean she’d pick them over me?
Douche! When had I ever been able to predict Charlie’s reactions? She was so far out of my fucking league.
B
y mutual consent
no one spoke on the journey north to ASI. But I could feel Caleb’s eyes on my cheek as I drove us. Contemplative, patient, calculating. It took everything in me not to smash my fist into the side of his face, and dash that look of bemused interest right off his dial.
Anger simmered beneath the surface and for once I didn’t baulk at feeling an emotion.
Caleb thought he knew me. But the old me had disappeared. She’d been shattered. The person who sat in the seat next to him
felt
. Fuck did she feel! I felt every-damn-thing.
My eyes flicked up to Adam in the rear view mirror. His were eyeballing the back of Caleb’s skull. Murderous intent in the deep blue. And then they shifted to the mirror, catching me watching him. He didn’t smile, but I could have sworn the look in his eyes changed.
I’ll catch you
.
My gaze returned to the road, my heart thundering inside my chest. The fall I was about to take was too high for one man to cushion. Even a man like Adam Savill.
Why the hell was Caleb here?
I pulled the SUV into ASI’s underground garage. Nick’s car right behind us, practically on our bumper. Tension wound tight around my frame, and seeing Ava alight from the second vehicle only magnified the sensation. No amount of stretching my neck or rolling my shoulders made a difference. Nothing I did, nothing I’d been trained to do, helped.
We all rode up in the lift silently. Hard stares, narrowed eyes, strained muscles. Thank fuck there was no elevator music.
Stepping out into ASI’s reception and seeing Carmel with her hand under the desk, waiting, was the final straw. I didn’t realise I had one. But I was about to allow two of the most deadly agents into ASI’s inner sanctum and something about that made me snap.
I spun where I stood, heel of my palm coming up in a blur of colours, and smashing against Caleb’s chest before he could react. My other hand removed his Beretta from its holster and tossed it away leaving me free to deal with the fallout.
He responded immediately. Right hook, left to solar plexus, swipe of his leg across ankles, elbow to face, jab which I fended, slash downward towards my carotid, fist aimed at my jaw, fingers tangling in my hair, knife to throat - his throat not mine.
“Stop!” I yelled, just as Carmel pumped her shotgun in warning and voices shouted out all around us, guns finally being raised. “Calm the fuck down!” I ordered.
“I don’t know, Charles,” Caleb drawled as a drop of blood slowly slid down his throat. “I’m not feeling particularly agreeable right now.”
“Release my hair,” I growled.
“Remove the knife.” I pressed it in harder and he slowly - so very slowly - lifted both hands in surrender.
“Now your back-up,” I ordered.
Caleb let out a huff of breath. “You only had to ask, Charlie. Why the fight?”
Because I was mad. Raging with anger. Because I was sick of constantly being behind the eight ball. Awash in emotions I had no hope in hell of containing. Because I may owe Caleb Hart my life, but I sure as fuck was not going to hand it to him on a platter.
“Because you emailed me on the Department’s system,” I finally growled.
He removed a back-up Glock, a knife, then another, two magazines, and a garrote. The items clunked down on Carmel’s desk and echoed into the strained silence. Not once did the grandma lower her shotgun. I flicked my gaze around the room quickly. Nick had a gun to Ava’s head. Adam had one to Caleb’s back. Jason had removed Ava’s rifle and was going through her pockets. And Ben was slumped against the reception wall, Abi, keeping guard over her partner, had her gun out, but lowered.
I checked the big guy’s face, noted the pale colour, unusual for a Māori, and decided we needed to hurry this along. The throwing star had clearly missed his lung, but he’d lost a lot of blood before it had been staunched. He was fading. And knowing these guys, none of them wanted to show a weakness.
“That was a necessity,” Caleb finally replied, as though he’d recognised the heightened emotions in the small room and was using them for dramatic effect.
“We had a dead drop,” I pointed out. One he’d used since while conversing with Amber.
“I’d been tracked entering New Zealand,” he admitted, crossing his arms over his chest and staring down at me. “They knew I was here. I needed a story. We’re all being watched now.”
Not just me, then. The Department was on universal alert. Why? Because of this operation? Or because the Director was walking a tightrope of secrets?
“You make a move in there,” I said, nodding towards the door that led into ASI proper, “and it won’t be just me who puts a bullet in your head.”
“My, my, Charles,” Caleb drawled. “You’ve gone all momma-bear.”
I ignored his statement, well aware every single thing I did told a story, painted a picture, allowed this man to see who I’d become. He’d adjust his strategy, change the angles, write a new plan. And he’d do it all while making you think he saw nothing.
Caleb Hart saw everything.
I used to too once upon a time.
Nick released the lock on the door and we all followed. Ben and Abi first, Jason behind them offering cover, Caleb and Ava, then Adam and me. I spared a glance at Carmel; she nodded her head in a surprising show of unity and returned her shotgun to its hiding place. The door clicked shut at my back and I felt like I took the first full breath I’d managed in months. Tension still coursed through my body, a pounding had started inside my head. But a weight of some sort had lifted from my chest.
Simply by walking into ASI.
It didn’t bear thinking about; once this Department debacle had been sorted, I’d be on my way. Leave these people to their lives; hopefully, relatively peaceful ones. Certainly, free of interference from a government agency.
Nick led my former colleagues to an interview room, the same one Adam had fucked me up against the wall in and made me feel. I’m not sure if he’d chosen it on purpose, but heat rose up my cheeks all the same. I gritted my teeth and entered the small space, wishing the walls were farther apart, the roof higher up, the floor not so uneven beneath my feet.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Ava said. She’d been suspiciously quiet. Assessing, planning, devising. “I especially like what you’ve done with the cameras.”
Yeah, they’d been counting them on the way in too.
Ben and Abi had disappeared, probably to the medical room. Jason had too, no doubt to control to watch. Just Nick, Adam and myself, facing off against Caleb and Ava.
Caleb let out a dramatic sigh. He didn’t sigh. He didn’t show emotion unless he wanted you to see it.
So like I had been.
“We’re not your enemy,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. Ava followed his lead. Taking the seat opposite, covering the room as best as they could from only two sides.
I almost smiled. But nothing about this was humorous.
“Then who is?” I asked, moving to the head of the table, regardless of Nick’s seniority.
He took the other end, closest to the door. His back to it, but then, no one he didn’t trust was outside this room. Adam sat down between Caleb and me; offering himself as a buffer. The underlying tension in the room felt like a thick blanket; shrouding us and making it difficult to breathe.
No one trusted anyone. I’d even guess that right now Nick didn’t really trust Adam. His loyalties were in question. His desire to protect me a kink in the ASI armour. I wouldn’t let it be, if I could help it. The only way to break Caleb and Ava was to show a united front.
“You know who, Charlie,” Caleb said. “You can’t have forgotten all of your training since taking this job.”
The blow had been well aimed; I let it roll over me.
“You said I know something,” I offered. “What is it
you
think I know?”
“Must we dance around this?” he asked, leaning back in his seat and looking comfortable.
I turned to Ava. “And you? When did you figure it out? Before or after you made me think you’d left the country?”
Left me.
Ava flicked a glance at Caleb; a barely there movement of her eyes. You might have thought she’d just blinked, but I caught it. She wasn’t here because he’d asked.
“You suspected Caleb of going rogue,” I guessed.
Caleb, for his part, didn’t move a muscle.
“I couldn’t be sure,” she admitted. At least I wasn’t the only one who had doubted. “Of either of you,” she added. “And I did leave. Then sneaked back in under an alias when no one was looking.”
“Ava,” Caleb finally said. “You wound me.”
“The Department message fooled me,” she offered.
It fooled all of us. I’d never stopped to think he was playing them at their own game.
“So what’s the official cover?” I asked him.
“I’m on-call,” he advised. “I was to court you, keep you entertained, so you wouldn’t see them coming.”
“So why no more messages via the system?”
“You deleted the first. They knew you were on to them.”
They knew. Time was up. Had been up for some time at a guess.
“How long have we got?” I asked.
“When they don’t hear back from Thibault, they’ll make their move.”
“Any more sleeper cells?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Caleb offered. “Ava?”
“I wasn’t even aware of you,” she snapped back. She’d always hated being kept in the dark.
“What now?” Nick asked, reminding us we were airing our dirty laundry in public. Well, as public as ASI ever got.
“Now we must prepare,” Caleb said easily, as if commenting on the weather.
“How did you know?” I pressed.
“About the Director?” Caleb clarified. I nodded for him to go on. “When my jobs dried up after Hong Kong.”
“They think you know something too,” I guessed.
“I’ve given them every opportunity to ask,” he replied. “But all I seem to get of late is silence.”
“Your handler?”
“Equally as surprised as me.” Unlike Mal. “Or so he says.”
I looked toward Ava. “And yours?”
“I’ve been busy,” she admitted, but then a furrow appeared on her brow. “Too busy. I’m meant to be tracking suspected terrorism activity in south east Asia. They’ve had me hopping from country to island and back again for the past nine months.”
“They didn’t want you near me,” I said.
“Or me,” Caleb offered.
“Am I any less capable of uncovering the rot?” Ava demanded, put-out that she’d not been sidelined like us.
“You didn’t enter the warehouse in Guangzhou,” I offered. “You were on the periphery.” As always. “And besides, you’re far more important to them than we are. We can be replaced easily. You cannot.” Snipers of Ava’s calibre were hard to come by. Their training alone took years.
“Speak for yourself,” Caleb quipped. “I began my education in the arts back when I was six.”
A sudden spark of pain speared through my cerebral. I flinched, closing my eyes tightly and lifted a hand to my temple.
“Charlie?” Adam called, but it felt like it was from miles away.
A glass of water appeared in my hand, Adam’s larger one wrapped around it, holding it steady, bringing it up to my lips. I took a sip, allowing him to care for me. Uncaring of the image we portrayed. The weakness I showed.
The pain made cognitive thought impossible.
I took several more large swallows before lowering the glass to the table, hearing the echo of its clink on the surface rattle around the silent room.
“How long have you been getting headaches?” Caleb asked.
I hadn’t been, just a pounding now and then.
I shook my head, albeit gently. I’d started to feel a little sick.
“Any memory loss?” Caleb pressed.
I lifted my eyes to his.
“Nausea?” he added.
What the hell? I was panting, I realised; quietly, but still.
A strained few seconds passed. Everyone tense. No one daring to speak for fear of setting off a chain reaction. Nick watched on avidly. I felt the camera lens above us bore into the top of my head. Ava had stilled, like a bird on a branch, camouflaging herself, protecting herself. And Adam had turned his back on Caleb and was looking at me.
It was his eyes I met first. A challenge there; he knew. He knew I’d been suffering from headaches, from nausea and God knows what else. He knew. Even though he barely knew me. It had been long enough. Long enough for him to crack my shell, to peer inside, to see
me
.
I’ll catch you
, his look said.
I’ll catch you
.
“What are you saying?” I asked Caleb, but my eyes were locked on Adam’s.
Caleb cleared his throat in a very un-Caleb-like manner calling all of our attention.
“You too?” Ava asked.
“Have you?” Caleb immediately shot back. We all watched as Ava shook her head.
My eyes found Caleb’s. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I never get sick, and I sure as hell never get headaches. So whatever it is, it is not natural. It’s induced. And there appears to be fuck all we can do about it.”
“What’s changed in your routines?” Nick asked.
Everything, I wanted to say, but bit my tongue.
Caleb glared at him, but did deem the question worth answering.
“I started digging into Guangzhou.”
“The Director,” I said.
“Fuck,” Ava breathed.
“But how?” Adam demanded.
Nick’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket, stared at the screen, then flicked eyes up to the camera dome and nodded.
“Tell us about your training?” he asked, as if we’d divulge sensitive information such as that. “In particular,” he added, “when it started.”
“What are you thinking?” I demanded, instead of answering that time-bomb.
“Not me. Eric,” Nick advised. “Just a theory he’s working on.”
“And that theory is?” Caleb queried, clearly not needing to ask who Eric was.
“Better if you don’t know that yet.”
Bloody hell.
I let out a frustrated breath, then said, “We
can’t
tell you about our training.”
“Charlie, who are you trying to protect?” Adam asked softly.
I turned my head to look at him and smiled. It just slipped out. I hadn’t intended it to. Maybe it was his caring tone. Maybe it was the
I’ll catch you
look he kept throwing my way. But I smiled. And it was genuine.