Lear

by Jasinda Wilder

  “So you took a pretty big hit in that detonation, but nothing to wipe you out?”

  I nodded. “Right. I’ve intentionally spread things out so I could lose one, two, three, even four of my safe houses and still have enough in terms of computing technology, cash, identification, and firearms to start over.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “How many safe houses do you have, exactly?”

  I laughed. “A lot. A comically unreasonable number.”

  “Like, ten?”

  I grinned. “In that range.”

  “You won’t tell me exactly?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “The fact that you know I have any at all, much less how many, is more than most of my closest friends know.”

  “You really don’t trust anyone, do you?”

  I sighed. “I trust my team with my life.”

  “But not your safe houses.”

  “That’s different. A man’s safe house is sacred. I know each of my teammates has at least one secret stash of gear, ID, money, and weapons. They know, logically, that I have a stash or stashes; they just don’t know the specifics. It’s a security thing. If I were to be tortured, I couldn’t give that information away.”

  She nodded. “That I get.” She folded the foreign currency into a single wad and stuffed it into the glove box. “I mean, none of the members of my squad know the first fucking thing about me as a person, with the singular exception of Johnny Raze himself, and he’s my brother in every way but genetics.”

  “Johnny Raze,” I repeated. “What’s he like? I’ve heard so many stories about him over the years that it’s hard to identify what’s real and what’s not.”

  She hesitated. “He’s…complicated. Very, very, very complicated. He has…not multiple personalities—multiple facets to his personality, I guess you could say. As a black ops combat specialist, he’s unparalleled. He has damn near superhuman reaction times, perfect aim, he’s silent on his feet whether walking across grass, concrete, or dry fucking leaves. He’s cold, calculating, and utterly without mercy for his target. He will accomplish his mission no matter the cost. Yet, he’s also abnormally kind, compassionate, understanding, and giving. Charming. Funny. Freakishly intelligent.”

  I eyed her. “Sounds like you’re half in love with him.”

  She shook her head immediately. “No. Like I said—he’s my brother. I love him, but it is not, has never been, and will never be anything romantic. He’s my blood brother, my boss. I’ve shed blood with him, and for him—both as his employee and in saving his life, and he’s done the same for me.”

  I tapped the phone on my lap. “You want to call him?”

  She sighed, a long slow exhale of consideration. “I’ve been thinking about that. I do want to let him know something is up, but I’m not sure I want to involve him.” A soft laugh. “He’ll be almighty pissed off when he finds out I’m in trouble and didn’t alert him—personally he’ll be hurt and pissed, and professionally he’ll be livid.”

  “I had a couple encrypted satellite phones back there, but in the rush to get out, I forgot to grab one.”

  “What about that iPad?”

  I shook my head. “No cellular reception on it. Used for operating the systems of that house only. If I could connect it to Wi-Fi, you could use it to call him, but it would be easily traceable, assuming Alice knows about you and has been doing her homework on your network of associated persons.”

  “How safe is that assumption?”

  I shrugged. “No fucking clue. They may have just tagged you exiting the bar with me, and assumed you were someone they could use as bait, that I have strong enough moral compunction that I’d hesitate to let them harm you. That’s minimum, and in that case they may know nothing about you. But the safer assumption is that Alice tagged you in my company, and while we were doing our thing in my hotel room, Alice was digging up whatever she could on you.”

  “Won’t be much,” Cuddy muttered.

  “No?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I was in a different foster home every year or two from age two to fourteen. At fourteen, I lied, cheated, and forged my way into the army.”

  I stared at her. “At fourteen?”

  She nodded. “Forged enough fake ID to pass for an eighteen-year-old girl named Danielle Cuddy, and got assigned 03-11B. Did a tour on the ground in Iraq. Got noticed, completely by accident, by a CIA somebody, and got sucked into the black hole of covert operations for those three-letter bureaus you were talking about earlier.”

  “So, Danielle Cuddy isn’t your real name.”

  She frowned. “I mean, I’ve been, legally speaking, Danielle Cuddy for the last twenty years. It’s not the name I was born with, but it’s who I am.” Her gaze, her voice went distant. “The girl who bounced from foster home to foster home? She was shy, helpless, abused—” A short, thick pause punctuated that statement. “She was raped, molested, beaten, starved, burned, locked in closets…if you can do something horrible to a human being, it was done to that girl at some point in the twelve years she was in the system.”

  “Jesus, Cuddy.”

  She shrugged, staring out the window. “Old shit, best left buried with the fuckers who did it.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “They’re all buried, huh?”

  She turned hard eyes on me. “Yes, Lear, they are.” She flicked her eyes back to the window, and the scenery flying past. “I got my 0317 rating and an M24. Went AWOL for two weeks and reported back for duty as a covert ops combat specialist.” A hesitation. “I spent those two weeks with a handwritten list of names, crossing them off like Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill. I crossed off every single name on that list. One round, one name.”

  I thought back. “This would’ve been back in…what, ’98, ’99?”

  She shook her head. “Later than that. Did a tour in Iraq and then shipped to Fort Benning for sniper school.” A moment of thought. “So, it would’ve been more like ’01 or early ’02.”

  “I think I remember that. There was a series of murders reported that never got any kind of explanation—mostly in DC and Arlington and the surrounding suburbs if I remember right. Each one had the markings of an assassination, a single high-powered rifle round to the T-box. No real connection between them other than the style of kill. Just that quick series across two weeks, and then nothing. No leads, no evidence, nothing.”

  “The connection was that they were all foster fathers, and they were all purely evil human beings,” Cuddy spat. “Was it murder? Sure. But those fuckers had it coming. You think I was the only innocent little girl they did that shit to? I sure as hell know I wasn’t.”

  I held up a hand, palm out. “Hey, I am not passing judgment.”

  She eyed me for a long time. “No, maybe you’re not.” She dropped her gaze. “Never told anyone that before—that those kills were me.”

  “Won’t go past me. Won’t ever leave this vehicle,” I said. “You have my word.”

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  I hesitated. “So, how’d you do them? Like, how’d you get away with it like you did?”

  She shrugged. “Before sniper school, I went through some…training, and interviews, I guess you could say, that introduced me to my new career path in covert operations. I went through sniper school, and was supposed to report back to my contact afterward…I just took a little extra time getting back to him, so I wasn’t technically AWOL as it was after the instruction period ended, but before my official duties as an operative started.” She thought for a moment or two. “Honestly, it was easy. I knew where they all lived. Pick a rooftop or window a good quarter mile or so from the target, send a round off, disassemble, and off you go. By the time anyone figures out that that was a rifle shot in the suburbs and where it came from, you’re gone. And since none of them were high-value targets and thus obviously had no security perimeter, it was child’s play. Don’t leave a shell, don’t leave fingerprints, and stay off camera. Simple.” She frowned at me. “I mean, come
on, though. You can’t tell me that with your training, you couldn’t pull it off as easily as I did. Shit, you blew up a fucking house with a bunch of people in it, and you’ll get away with it.”

  I nodded, and shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”

  She stared at me again. “Why the hell have I told you so many personal things?”

  I shrugged. “You know shit about me no one else does, too.” I hesitated again, but couldn’t keep it back. “It’s gotta mean something, Danielle.”

  Her level brown gaze didn’t waver. “Maybe. Maybe not.” She replaced the magazine in her HK with a fresh one and thumbed rounds into the one she’d ejected—studiously not looking at me.

  I sighed. “Yeah, okay. Roger that.” I leaned against my window and drove with my right hand, focusing on the road, on formulating plans in my head, on anything other than the woman in the seat beside me.

  Trouble was, my brain was being extraordinarily unhelpful—providing memories of Danielle, naked and all bronzed caramel skin and heavy breasts sitting astride me, taking my cock and gasping helplessly; mixed in with those memories of her skin and her mouth and her huge heavy pendulous delicious tits and her tight pussy and way she felt wrapped and spasming around my cock were other images—Cuddy, now, a knife in hand, dripping red; rushing tiger-smooth with her HK spitting death in precise threes, a ballet of practiced lethality.

  Chapter Five

  Into the Woods

  I couldn’t believe I’d fucking told him about that kill list. That was one of my deepest, darkest secrets, kept locked in a safe, wrapped in chains, and buried deep inside, in the shadowy corners of my soul where the demons lurked, those red-eyed, blood-thirsty fiends which drive the engine of the killing machine that is Cuddy.

  See, my weakest moments weren’t naked and post-coital; I was in total possession of myself, then. No, my walls were lowest and weakest immediately after the thrill of a kill. After the adrenaline fades and the hand shaking sets in. Normally, I’m in the back of an Osprey or a C-130, or hanging out the side of a Blackhawk when it hits me, and the guys are strapped in beside me and laughing and joking it up to cover their own onset of post-op nerves. I’m never compelled to spill with them, because they’re the guys—the Guys. My boys, my team. I know more personal shit about them than their own mothers. I’ve patched up their boo-boos, held them as they wept for a dead friend, and they’ve done the same for me.

  None of it is personal—I mean, it is personal, but…that’s Cuddy. Just Cuddy.

  This, with Lear? I’ve got Danielle mixed up in this. He’s been inside me and kissed me—and he’s watched me take lives with the ease of a butcher trimming a steak.

  That’s personal.

  And it’s fucking with me.

  He listened to me without judgment as I spilled a secret that could put me away for several lifetimes. He didn’t give me pity or sympathy, just…understanding.

  It was a nuanced difference, but a vital one in this business.

  And yet, I push him away.

  I put distance between us when I’m compelled in some sick, twisted part of my bleached-bones heart to draw him closer. To tell him more. To hold his hand and let him see the soft vulnerable girl that still hunkers way down deep in the most secret caverns of my haunted soul.

  But I don’t fucking dare.

  I’d lose my edge and, if I did that, I’d let her out—Daniela Khoury. I’ve buried her—no one knows that name, not the CIA, not the NSA, not my former covert ops team, not my current merc team, not Johnny, no one. Not even Johnny knows that Danielle isn’t my real name, or that any of that shit happened to the person I was before the army, before Agent Rohr found me.

  I sit back and gaze out the window, thoughts of the past streaming by as fast as the scenery.

  The inside of the souped-up Blazer is silent except for the rumble of the engine and the loud hum of the mud tires. We’re on a county highway now, heading north and west. Obviously, our destination is a mystery to me.

  I want to forget that anything happened with Lear, but I simply can’t. It’s impossible. He felt too fucking good inside me. I’ve had plenty of men, across the range of endowment from a micropenis, to someone hung with a dick big enough to leave me waddling. But he was…just perfect. Big enough to fill me to repletion, to an agony of ecstasy. He wasn’t just hung perfectly, either—he knew exactly what he was doing and how to do it, and he could read my physical reaction and cues as easily as he’d read computer code.

  I can say with utter accuracy that those few precious minutes riding him—and the minutes leading up to it as well—were, without a shred of doubt, the best sex of my entire goddamn life. Better than all the sexual experiences that went before, combined.

  Why? It wasn’t the size of his dick, or technique. It was something…intangible.

  That’s what scared me.

  And that kept me from being able to pretend like it didn’t happen, from being able to ignore him and forget him.

  I mean, I can’t forget him because we’re still stuck trying to survive this crazy situation together.

  But normally, when I’m in life-or-death situations, I’m cold. Hard. Locked down and laser focused until it’s safe to take off my gear. I don’t ever let Danielle out until the weapons are in their racks and the tactical armor is hung up, and the guys are gone.

  But Lear has seen Danielle and Cuddy. I can’t get Danielle back into her box, and she keeps sneaking out when it’s supposed to be Cuddy time.

  My carefully constructed partitions were crumbling.

  I managed to keep my silence for a good hour and a half, at which point Lear slowed and pulled into a gas station off the county highway. The sign over the pavilion sheltering the gas pumps read Casey’s; across the road was an old concrete parking lot, now cracked and overgrown with grass, with a row of old semitrailers parked along the line of trees beyond.

  The highway continued on in both directions, mostly empty of traffic, and I sat in the silence of the SUV as Lear pumped gas and then strolled lazily across the lot into the quick-mart, returning with two big Styrofoam cups of coffee and a plastic bag full of sugary treats and high carb junk food.

  I pawed through the snacks, and eyed him. “I took you for more of a healthy eater.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a constant war within me. I’m a programmer at heart, so I live on caffeine and junk food. But I’m also a fitness fanatic and a member of a special ops team, which means I have to be in pretty peak shape all the time, so I have to eat healthy. It’s a tough balance to maintain.”

  “Well, I admit I’m glad to see some junk food,” I said with a happy grin, unwrapping a King Size Snickers and laying into it. “Nothing like sugar and chocolate after a firefight.”

  He snorted as he pulled back onto the highway. “Firefight? Those assholes didn’t get a shot off.”

  “No, but they could’ve, and I went in it not knowing whether they would or not, so the nervous system responds the same way. Danger is danger.”

  He nodded, digging in the bag and coming up with a Danish. “True, true.”

  We sipped coffee and ate fattening, horrible-for-us junk food—we both knew it was comfort food, meant to soothe our nerves and keep us wired. There’s no downtime possible, not until we’re somewhere we can take turns catching some shut-eye but, until then, we both have to be on high alert—and we’ve both been up for far too long as it is.

  I watched him, sidelong. He’s oblivious to my surreptitious glances—he’s driving and eating and slamming coffee, fingers tapping on the wheel, occasionally resting a hand on the shifter, scanning the traffic ahead and behind, watching for tails. Which meant I could take a moment to just…look at him.

  God, he was beautiful. That sandy-blond hair, in the sunlight of dawn, had hints of red in it. His scruff was thicker now than when I’d met him, more reddish than his hair. His features were somewhere between rugged and fine—not quite classically handsome, not quite ruggedly handsome. Without
his glasses, he lacked the sophisticated, nerdy air, which made him seem more worldly and athletic.

  I remembered the way he’d kissed me. The way his mouth had felt on my pussy, slithery and wet and insistent and talented, taking me to climax with a single-minded purpose and exquisite skill. I blinked away a memory of being beneath him, his big strong hands on my breasts, lifting and cupping…

  I blinked and blinked, but the memory wouldn’t leave. I closed my eyes and tried staring out the window, but all I could see was him, lazily watching me as I caressed his beautiful cock.

  I swallowed hard at that memory—licked my lips and tried to look over at him again, to steal a glance at his profile, his thick arms, his trim waist...the bulge behind the zipper.

  Dammit, Cuddy, I snarled at myself. Not now.

  Abruptly, he glanced at me. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I’d answered too quickly, and tried to backtrack. “What’d’you mean what?”

  He lifted a shoulder, eyes intense on mine. “You were looking at me weird.”

  “I wasn’t looking at you in any kind of way.”

  He didn’t quite smirk, but his grin was knowing. “Yes, you were.”

  I blushed, and hoped he couldn’t see it. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Either you’re a shitty liar, or I’m just good at reading you,” he said, gaze bouncing from the road to me and back. “Because either way, I know you’re full of shit right now.”

  I slugged back coffee and watched the solid white line to my right. “Sure, Lear. Keep telling yourself that.”

  He was quiet again, but the silence was different now. I held it, tried to burrow into the silence, but it was too dense, too thick with unsaid thoughts, with his awareness of my lies and my awareness of his body…and our mutual awareness of each other, and the violent sexual tension writhing between us.

  Because that’s what the silence was, suddenly—a thick, hot, hard, tense, boiling sexual tension.