Destroyed With You (Stark Security Book 5)

by J. Kenner

  Stark and Ryan Hunter, Stark’s friend who headed the Stark Security Agency, were the only ones in the organization who knew about Winston’s connection to government intelligence operations. Even then, they didn’t know he’d once been a full-on operative with the SOC. Seagrave had told them only that he’d been “attached” to the Hades investigation in his role as sheriff. Not a lie, but hardly the full truth, especially considering he’d applied for the sheriff position while officially on the books at the SOC.

  Which meant that until Emma had join Stark Security, all anyone else at the SSA believed was that he’d been a small town sheriff who’d played once or twice in the big leagues before signing on with the elite organization.

  That, and the painful truth that Winston had left Texas after his wife had been killed by a car bomb.

  Working for Stark Security hadn’t erased his pain, but it had been a balm. Now, though…

  Well, now the pain and the memories had come flooding back from nothing more than the mention of Texas.

  “If it’s not about Linda, then what the hell is this?” He heard the edge in his voice and didn’t try to tamp it down. “You just toss Texas in my face? You of all people?”

  Seagrave didn’t even flinch. “I said it isn’t about her death,” he said gravely. “At least, not exactly.”

  Winston frowned, too curious to be angry at his friend for what sounded like bullshit game playing. “What the hell, Anderson? Was there someone else pulling McNally’s strings? Someone we missed at the top level of the Consortium? Because if there is, you point me toward the S.O.B., and I swear I will take him down in record time.”

  He’d spent years undercover in Hades, first landing the job, then living the role as a rural county working with the city and county officials. The higher-ups in every office from the mayor’s chambers to the police department had been corrupt down to the bone, dabbling in everything from drug-running to blackmail to massive government and civilian fraud tied to the oil and gas industry.

  After Linda’s death sparked that final, violent surge, the SOC and Winston had essentially shut down the spiderweb of illegal operations. As far as he knew, only two men had managed to escape the net. They’d been lower level flunkies who’d gone on to other illicit operations in other parts of the country.

  One, a man who’d been known as the Serpent, was now in SOC custody thanks to Emma and Tony’s latest operation. The other, Cane, was dead. And good riddance to him.

  The possibility that there were other players still running free made his blood boil. He’d thought he’d burned through his fury in the passing years. Now, he knew he hadn’t. The embers still glowed, ready to ignite at a moment’s notice.

  He drew a breath and met Seagrave’s eyes. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me who we missed and I’ll bring you his head on a platter.”

  “I have no doubt,” Seagrave said. “But it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  Winston sat back, eyeing the commander, trying to read what the man wasn’t saying. And, more importantly, why he was dancing around the very reason that he’d called Winston in. “Then explain it to me.”

  “You’re here because of a woman,” Seagrave said flatly. His shoulders sagged as he sighed, looking older than his forty-something years. “Hell, Starr. You’re here because of Linda.”

  Winston frowned, certain his confusion showed on his face. “You told me when I walked in here that this had nothing to do with her death.”

  “I didn’t exactly say that. And yet, you’re right. It has nothing to do with her death.” He lowered his hands from the table to the wheels of his chair, then maneuvered back before rolling around the table toward Winston. Billions of dollars in government tech at his disposal, and Seagrave still preferred a manual wheelchair to one with bells, whistles, and other “gizmos,” as he called them.

  “Don’t play games with me,” Winston said. “You know better than anyone how much her death destroyed me.” Emma had been transferred out soon after the bombing, so even she didn’t fully know the dark pit into which he’d sunk after the forensics team positively identified Linda’s DNA. Teeth. Two teeth was all they found in the bombed out shell of a car. But that had been enough to prove that the love of his life was dead.

  Seagrave met his eyes, then took a remote control from a pocket on the side of his chair. He pressed a button, and a video screen whirred down from the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re not going to like this.”

  Winston said nothing as the lights dimmed.

  As the room darkened, the screen lit up and an image came into view. A bustling sidewalk in an urban area. Austin, maybe. Or, hell, it could be Manhattan. Seattle. Even LA. No way to tell at glance. Not from the angle of the lens focused more on the pedestrians than the surroundings.

  “What are we—”

  The words stuck in his throat, the answer staring him in the face.

  Linda.

  Oh, dear God, he was looking at his Linda.

  “This is old footage,” he said, his entire body going cold as fear and hope warred for dominance in his soul. “It has to be.”

  “It’s not.”

  Winston’s eyes locked on the screen. “When was this taken? And where?”

  “Last week,” Seagrave said, and Winston’s stomach did a somersault. “In Seattle.”

  “So, you’re saying what? That for some reason a government intelligence organization just happened to stumble across footage of a dead woman walking the streets of Seattle?”

  “You know better than that.” Now the voice was gentle.

  “How long?” Winston had to clear his throat in order to continue. “Your people have had her under surveillance. Tell me how long you’ve known that she’s alive. And then tell me why the fuck you didn’t bring me in on this earlier.”

  “Watch.”

  “Dammit, Anderson, I–”

  “That’s an order, Starr. Watch the damn screen.”

  Winston watched as she entered an office building, realizing then that the footage was taken by a drone. It rose, the aspect ratio widening to take in the full Seattle skyline as it ascended higher and higher, finally hovering across the street, but level with the roof-line of the building she’d entered. The image zoomed in, focusing on a roof access shed with a closed metal door.

  A few moments later, the door opened and a man stepped out. He surveyed the roof, frowned, then checked his watch.

  Soon, the door opened again. At first, no one emerged, but Winston could see that the shadowy figure in the doorway was a woman. His gut constricted, and when she stepped onto the gravel and tar rooftop, he realized that he’d stopped breathing.

  The man turned to her, his arms extended in greeting as he took a step toward her. Her mouth curved into a smile so familiar it made his heart ache. His body tightened with an unfamiliar longing, then recoiled when she lifted her hand to reveal the gun that had been concealed in the folds of her skirt.

  She aimed. She fired.

  And then his Linda turned her back on the body, slipped through the doorway, and disappeared from sight.

  Chapter Two

  “No,” Winston said, feeling sick. He shook his head, hating the weakness inside him that wished he could un-see what he’d just watched. “It’s a mistake. Whatever we’re looking at, it’s not what it seems.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Fury cut through Winston as he wrenched his head away from the now-dark screen to focus on Seagrave. “Why the hell did you drag me here? Haven’t I been punished enough? My wife died—died—in a goddamn explosion. You know what I went through, damn you. You saw my pain, and you fucking sympathized. You were my friend. And now you show me this? Why? To rip me up all over again?”

  “I’m showing you because you have a right to see it. And when the shock passes, you might even thank me for bringing you the truth.”

  Winston huffed. “I wouldn’t bet the ranch.” He pushed himself out of the chair, wantin
g nothing more than to get out of this room and away from the nightmare playing out around him. The truth yawning before him like a dark abyss, threatening to suck him down, destroying the last, tattered remnants of joy he’d been clinging to for years.

  But there wasn’t any place to go. Nowhere to which he could escape. Not really.

  He sank back into his chair. “Her memory is all I have left. Why the hell do you want to rip that away from me?”

  Seagrave’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. The fact is that I need you on this. And I thought—well, I thought you’d rather curse the truth than curl up with a lie.”

  For the first time in over a decade, Winston wished he hadn’t given up smoking. “Yeah, well, I guess you thought wrong.”

  “I suppose I did.” Seagrave rolled toward the door. Pressing a button on the remote so that it began to swing open. “Take as long as you need. You know the way out.”

  Winston kept his eyes on the floor, not looking up until he heard the door click shut behind his friend. Only then did he let the tears that had been clogging his throat flow free. It couldn’t be true. How the hell could it possibly be true?

  Even now, he could remember the way she felt in his arms. Their long, intimate conversations. The trust they shared. The love that had filled them.

  If all that was a lie, then he didn’t know himself, much less his wife. He wouldn’t believe that. Couldn’t believe it. Because if it were true, then the best years of his life had been nothing but a charade. A mockery of his former happiness.

  “It’s not real,” he told himself. “It can’t be.”

  But of course it could. He might be trapped beneath a pain so intense he would just as soon die than work through it, but that didn’t mean he was blind. Of course it could be true. He’d seen stranger things during his tenure at the SOC. And God knows he’d seen crueler women.

  But his Linda? Even if it was her, how could she have walked away from him like that? She’d loved him with the same intensity that he’d loved her.

  Hadn’t she?

  He’d never once doubted that reality, and he didn’t want to now. It was as if he’d suddenly learned that gravity wasn’t real, and he’d been stuck to the earth with glue all these years. It didn’t feel right contemplating the possibility that she’d been playing a role. Acting a part. And yet there she was. It was her on that video—there was no doubt in his mind. And while it might be nice to think she had an identical twin or been cloned in some evil genius’s laboratory, this was reality, not a Netflix series.

  His wife—Linda Marie North Starr—had just killed a man in cold blood. He’d seen it, and as much as he wished he could punch Seagrave in the face and erase the whole bloody evening, he couldn’t deny that basic reality. It wasn’t in his nature to hide from pain or bad news, no matter how much he might want to. He had to face the truth head-on. He knew three things for certain—Linda’s DNA had been recovered from the car, the body had been unrecognizable, and she’d worked for the city government of a town that was fraught with corruption.

  “Damn you,” he whispered as the dark threads of a twisted reality twined around him. “Don’t you know I loved you?”

  He took a moment to simply breathe. To calm the rage that was threatening to explode out of his fingertips. Then he stood and went to the door, planning to go find Seagrave in his office. He didn’t have to. His friend was waiting in the antechamber.

  “She faked her own death,” Winston said.

  “It certainly appears that way. I’m sorry, Winston,” he added, his expression and his voice underscoring the sincerity of the words.

  “I know you are,” Winston said, his shoulders sagging under the weight of emotion. “So am I.”

  There was a battered couch against the far wall, and Winston took a seat on it. “Who was he?”

  “One of ours,” Seagrave said. “Deep cover with a law firm that does a significant amount of legal maneuvering for an arms dealer based in South Africa.”

  “She assassinated him.” He had to say the words. Had to feel the weight of them on his mouth and tongue before he could believe them. “My Linda. Who once told me she didn’t like me bringing my gun into the house, but that she’d get over it because of my job.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Who’s she working for? The Consortium’s gone. We ended them. Or was that fake, too?”

  “As far as we know, the Consortium exists no more. We interrogated the Serpent again. He confirmed as much. As for her employer, we’re still trying to ascertain who that is.”

  “Ascertain?” Winston scoffed. “Going easy on her, then?” His gut clenched at the thought of the interrogation techniques he imagined they were using on her. He tried to tell himself she deserved every one of them. And yet just thinking about it made him feel nauseous.

  “She’s not in custody,” Seagrave said.

  Winston stared at him, not comprehending. “You tailed her. You watched her. How the hell didn’t you—?”

  “That isn’t our footage.”

  Winston leaned back in his chair, his head starting to throb. “Listen, Anderson. I get that you think I’m fragile where Linda is concerned, and maybe you’re right. But spit it the fuck out, okay? Quit dancing around whatever you know and whatever you want me to do. Tell me now, or I’m walking.”

  Seagrave moved closer. “Here it is, then. That wasn’t her first kill. Not by a long shot. And we have intel that she has a new assignment. I need you, Winston. You’re the best man for this job.”

  “Am I?” His voice was rough. His body numb.

  “You know her better than anyone. We need to stop the coming assassination. And we want to bring her in alive.”

  He studied Seagrave’s face. “You’re saying she’s a professional, but you think she’ll falter if it’s me she’s up against. That I can bring her in alive where nobody else can.”

  Seagrave lifted a shoulder.

  “I have a job.”

  “And I’ve spoken with both Ryan and Damien. I told them I wanted to borrow you for a special assignment.”

  “They don’t know I used to work for you.”

  “They still don’t,” Seagrave assured him. “But they do believe that you’ve had joint operations with the SOC before. I told them I need you on special assignment. And I told them why.”

  “You told them about Linda. About that video.”

  “No. But I told them you’d want to be involved.”

  “I don’t want to be involved.”

  “No?”

  Winston pushed up off the couch and paced to the window. He looked down at Los Angeles a dozen floors beneath them. “Don’t play mind games with me, Colonel. You’ll only piss me off.”

  Behind him, Seagrave sighed. “That isn’t my intent. If you truly want to walk away, I won’t pressure you. But I don’t think that you do.”

  Winston closed his eyes, working to keep his whole body from sagging with the truth of that statement. He told himself he wanted nothing more than to go home and forget he heard any of this. To let some other agent go in and learn why Linda had killed that man. Why she’d killed others, too, assuming what Seagrave said was true. He should use this meeting as a fulcrum. A lever to send his past life with Linda tumbling down into a pile of so much rubble, and a springboard to move on with his life.

  Not gonna happen.

  He turned back. “Whatever she’s involved in, it’s not what you think. She’s innocent.”

  Seagrave’s expression didn’t change. “I hope you’re right. I don’t think you are. But I like that you’re playing Devil’s advocate.”

  “And what exactly is the assignment? If you want me to take her out, I won’t do it.” For that matter, he’d actively foil anyone who tried. He wanted—needed—answers. And no one was touching her until he had them.

  “I want you to apprehend her before she eliminates her target. Then I want you to bring her and the target in safely. Along with the laptop the target will ha
ve with him.”

  “The target’s in Austin?” Winston asked, shifting into professional mode. Tamping down the emotions that could keep him from doing his job. And, dammit, he was going to do it. No way was someone else going into the field to confront her. “When is she supposed to make the hit? For that matter, how do you know any of this?”

  Seagrave didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted the remote and started the video running again. “Since receiving the footage you saw, we’ve been able to confirm that Linda Starr—who now goes by Michelle Moon—is responsible for at least two other assassinations of high level agents that we know of. And we suspect she’s behind several others.”

  “Michelle Moon,” he repeated, his voice like sandpaper.

  “Does that mean something to you?”

  “No,” Winston lied. “Not a damn thing.”

  Seagrave studied him, but didn’t pursue the comment. “This man,” he said, pausing on the image on the face of a clean-shaven man with thinning brown hair. “Our intel suggests that he’s her next target. He arrived in Austin yesterday and is scheduled to stay for a week. Tommy Bartlett.”

  Winston frowned. “What’s the goal here? Apprehending Linda? Bartlett? Or is this about whatever’s on that computer?”

  Seagrave smiled at Winston as if he’d just aced his final exam. “I’d say that just about covers it.”

  Winston frowned, but didn’t push. Seagrave would reveal what he wanted to reveal. Need to know. The buzzwords of their profession.

  “I will say this—we want that computer. But even so, all sides of the triangle are equal.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Winston said. “But can’t you just hack the machine? I’ve seen the brainpower employed by the SOC, not to mention the resources Stark has, and we both know you utilize Stark International’s tech departments.”

  “Would that we could. It’s completely old school. The only way to access the information is to sit in front of that machine—then get past all the protections, which are apparently rigged with self-destruct traps. That machine gets the biometric information or the wrong password or gets broken or lost, and we lose a lot of valuable information. Which is why we want the man, too. What’s in his head is valuable as well.”