by Elise Faber
“You can’t change what happened.”
“What? You going to advise me to put my past behind me and move forward?”
“Yes.”
“And have you forgotten Syria?”
“No,” I said. “And I won’t ever forget it, but that’s not the obstacle that’s preventing me from moving forward. Rather, it’s the building block for my blueprint of how to move forward.” I shook my head. “I will regret how that mission went down for the rest of my life, but I’ve taken those mistakes, I’ve made certain that I won’t ever make the same ones again.”
“It’s not that easy.”
I froze. “Did I say it was easy?” A beat. “Some days it’s the hardest fucking thing to do, moving forward, not letting my regrets hold me back.” A big chunk of the compacted dirt came off in my hands. “And you know who taught me that?”
“No.”
“Brit,” I said. “My sister is the most fearless person I know. Bad shit happened to her, but even if I put that aside, and I look at all the ways people tried to hold her back, opportunities were given to her with strings and taken away as easily as breathing. And she spent years with a target on her back.” I swallowed as the fury at what my little sister had been through, things I hadn’t been able to protect her from pushed forward. That was another one of those regrets that had become a building block, another reason I was at KTS trying to make the world a better place. “She’s lucky in so many ways, for sure, but she struggled, she pushed back, and she didn’t let past regrets stop her. I’m supposed to be the older brother, but it’s me being so damned proud of her, seeing her live her life and grab hold of the things she wanted that’s made me realize I can’t keep looking backward.”
When Ava didn’t say anything, I decided to lay my final card on the table. “And the person I want to look forward with is you. It’s always been you.”
Quiet. Long, drawn out, uncomfortable quiet.
Then soft, soft words. “I won’t ever be capable of a normal relationship.”
Continuing to brush the dirt away, I felt the rock give a little bit. “You’re capable of a lot more than you realize, sweetheart.”
More silence.
“And for the record, I don’t give a shit about normal,” I told her. “I just want you to be you.”
“Dan,” she sighed.
“No decisions while we’re in a cell,” I said.
“When should I make said decisions?”
“Once we’re out of here and safe.”
“Dan.”
“Ava.”
Another long moment of quiet. “Okay. Once we’ve made it out of here alive, I’ll think about what you said.” I breathed a sigh of relief. At least until she spoke again, her voice tinged with sharp. “Did you just call me sweetheart again?”
Fuck. “It slipped out,” I said. “Just pretend I complimented you on your superior sniper abilities and forget all use of endearments.”
“Dan.”
I focused on the wall. “I’ve almost got the stone out.”
“You’re a pain in my ass,” she muttered.
Since I knew the time for serious conversations had passed—for the moment, at least—I went for a joke. “And once again, you’re agreeing with my sister.”
She laughed quietly then groaned and grabbed her side. “Stop being funny.”
“It’s a gift. I can’t just stop out of nowhere.” And then—yes! I managed to get my finger behind that sliver of rock and began to coax it out.
It came, millimeter by millimeter.
Finally, it was free, light pouring into the space. I glanced through quickly, saw enough to assess that Ava was right in that we were still near the Mediterranean. More than that was difficult to discern, so I leaned back and used the light to make my way back to her, to assess her injuries.
“We need to cut the tracker out,” she said, holding up her arm and exposing the inside of her elbow to the light, where the small GPS chip was located. “We can use the underwire of my bra. Sharpen it against the rocks—”
“Wait, Ava.” No fucking way was I cutting into her skin. We did need to cut the tracker out, but it would be out of my damn arm. “I need to see that ankle.”
“That’s—”
“I need you in fighting shape,” I said. “If we’re going to get out of here, yeah?”
“I’m—”
“That’s the truth, yeah? I can’t fight to get us out and have to haul your ass out of here.”
“Stop interrupting me.”
“Then focus and stop being stubborn.” My tone was deliberately sharp, hoping to make her mad, hoping that the slight lacing of panic and fear still threading through her tone would disappear under a deluge of angry. Because when Ava got angry, she was the most dangerous enemy someone could face.
And because if Ava was angry, she wouldn’t be that little girl, scared and trapped in this cell again.
“Do I need to call you sweetheart again?”
She scowled. “Do I need to call you asshole?”
“If that gets you out of that boot and splinted up sooner then, yes.”
“I’m not taking this boot off. If I do, it’s going to swell up, and then I really won’t be able to do shit on it.” I wasn’t sure I agreed with her, but I was pretty certain that I needed to see the knife wound that was supposedly not serious on her abdomen.
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine?”
“Yup. Let’s move on.” I reached for the hem of her T-shirt, tugged it up, and—“Fuck, Ava. This isn’t a bit of blood.” The emergency bandage was soaked through, even with KTS’s special clotting solution. Dried blood coated her abdomen, and the white material of the binding was bright red.
“Maybe it’s more than a bit,” she said. “But there’s nothing to be done for it.”
“And how about your arm?” I asked. “Is that really a graze?”
She tugged up the sleeve of her shirt. “Yes,” she muttered, showing me the bright red gouge on her left triceps. “Just a graze. Thankfully, I moved fast enough to at least avoid that.”
I studied the mark, debated for a moment at retrieving my own medical kit for the knife wound, but knew we might need it later.
It was better to conserve resources.
Especially, if the rest of the team was in the same position as us.
Right then. On to the next thing. Reaching for my belt buckle, I yanked it out of its loops.
“Um,” Ava began. “What are you doing?”
I undid the button, tugged down the zipper.
“Getting naked.”
Eighteen
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Ava
“Getting naked?” I asked.
More like squawked, but that was mostly because he’d sprawled on his back and was shoving his pants down his legs.
“Seriously, Dan. What in the fuck are you doing?”
He reached into the front of his boxer briefs, and I slammed my eyes closed. Why in the fuck was I slamming my eyes closed? I’d seen it, and I’d loved it, and I wanted to get my hands and mouth and tongue all over it again—
But by the time I managed to open my eyes again, his hand was out, his pants were coming back up, and he was tossing a small package my way.
I caught it reflexively then winced, remembering just where his hand had been.
“New from the tech squad,” he said. “Small blade in the hem of my boxers. You’ll have to open it up though. Fred”—the man back at main headquarters who designed a lot of our equipment—“just threw it in at the last minute. I swear, he used duct tape and superglue.”
Lifting it up so I could see the small silver package, wrapped in what indeed looked like duct tape, I began working at the seam.
With my teeth.
Probably, I should have been grossed out.
But frankly, I’d had my mouth in worse places, and . . . also I didn’t consider Dan’s cock a worse pla
ce.
Glorious, maybe.
Ugh.
Enough.
No decisions in this cell. Even if his words, his lack of disgust had me wrangling with what I’d always thought was the truth about who I was.
Eventually, I got the edge on the package open and was unpeeling the tape. “This is far below Fred’s usual standards.”
Dan buttoned his pants, yanked up the zipper. “He’s trying to figure out the safest mode of blade transport. It’s more difficult than the sole of a shoe, putting it in a waistband or hem of a piece of clothing.”
“You don’t want to stab yourself trying to get it out.”
“Right,” he said. “Or just walking around.”
“But it needs to be small and relatively undetectable, especially during a potential pat-down.” I slanted a glance at him “Is this where you tell me that your junk is so big, and that’s why they didn’t find it?”
A snort. “Not hardly.” His eyes flitted up, a cocky smile curving his mouth. “Although, this could be the point where I say you’ve seen it and . . .”
“It’s tiny?”
He mimed like I wounded him.
“Stop.” I smacked him lightly, kept unwrapping, even as I considered our options. The first thing I’d done when I’d woken up in the back of the van transporting us was to check our supplies. I’d run through our resources, painfully bound my wound in the back of the moving vehicle, checked that Dan was breathing. It hadn’t taken long to discover that all of our weapons had been taken.
Luna.
Poor Luna was probably tossed in the trash or the water somewhere, never to be used again.
I spared a moment for my poor rifle, most certainly discarded like a broken toy in some sad, dark place, and focused on getting out of here. “They knew about the blades in our boots, but not the first aid kits.”
“Or the underwear knives.”
I shuddered. “That’s not the name to call them.”
“Point made,” he said. “And taken.”
“Aside from bad word usage, they knew our room, and I’m guessing they also knew also about the surveillance, otherwise we would have seen them coming on the cameras.”
“Do you think they hacked it?”
I sighed, pulled the tiny knife from the plastic wrapping, and handed it to Dan. “I don’t know. But they would’ve had to, right? Either that, or we have another—” Breaking off, because I didn’t want to finish the sentence, I just shook my head.
He didn’t have that problem. “Traitor.”
“Right.” The question was, “Is this one new or the one we already know about?”
A nod. “Exactly.”
KTS didn’t exist in a vacuum. We’d had traitors before, those who gave in to the temptation of power or money. Daniel—the former agent we’d connected to criminal activity—was one of those. He had betrayed us barely a year before, and the memory was fresh enough that it seemed like the most likely scenario.
“Do you think Daniel”—it was a cruel twist that Dan shared a name with the bastard—“was a part of this?” I asked.
Laila had come face-to-face with Daniel on a mission not long ago—just months after the former agent had betrayed KTS and their team for the money and power offered by the Mikhailova clan. That betrayal had been a particular blow because Daniel had been previously fired by the agency, and Laila had vouched for her childhood friend to come back as a member of her team on a probational basis. He’d abused that trust then attempted to steal the drives KTS had recovered, putting two civilians’ lives at risk.
It was a fucked-up move, from a fucked-up person.
A person who—if he was somehow alive—was out there now with information about KTS.
Information he was potentially—and in all likelihood—sharing with their enemies.
We all understood why the Mikhailova—and as a consequence, Daniel—wanted the drives. They had contained information linking the Russians with many powerful people around the world, and the trail of money had given KTS rare insight into the inner workings of the Mikhailova. In fact, a whole team at KTS was currently working on cutting off those monetary channels to make their criminal activities more difficult.
But in the aftermath of that most recent interaction with Laila, Daniel had been presumed dead by her hand. Except . . . KTS trained their people to be strong, to never give up, and gave them numerous techniques to get out of a variety of sticky situations.
I wasn’t at all certain that a knife wound and subsequent explosion could take him down permanently.
I was still kicking.
Though the jury was out for how long.
Adrenaline was getting me through, but I knew that was a limited resource. At some point, my body would either succumb to infection or lose too much blood and be unable to function. Add in the ankle and Dan’s multitude of injuries and . . .
Yeah, I was still kicking.
And the question still was: for how long?
“Frankly,” I said, “this whole situation—our mission being hijacked, my father’s people knowing exactly where to find us and when to take us down, along with the previous meet with our source going FUBAR—suggests that Daniel might very much be alive.”
“Seems likely he survived the incident at the warehouse with Laila and that he’s behind this,” Dan agreed. “He knew how to get to us. And he knew about our old tech, but not the newly issued stuff.”
My ankle and side had both been slowly ratcheting up with pain, a steady throb-throb-throb that was building as time went on.
Adrenaline fading.
Ignoring that, I lay back, trying to pretend the pain wasn’t there. “Right. The first aid kits have only been common in the last few months, and the knife is new even to me.” I closed my eyes, attempted to breathe through the hurt. “But this mission hasn’t been on the books anywhere Daniel could have known about it. We planned it in a week.”
“If he’s alive and working with them,” Dan pointed out, “he could have spotted our setup.”
“That’s true.” I opened my eyes.
“Either way, we’ll have to change tactics in the future,” he said.
“Agreed.” A beat as I tilted my head, staring up at him. “Could he have known about our source in Munich?”
Dan nodded. “That’s possible, especially since he’d been reinstated to Laila’s team for a time. That source had been around for a while.”
The puzzle pieces were fitting together, and I didn’t like one bit where this was leading. But we would have time to talk after we got out of this cell. And step one of that was ensuring our trackers were able to be picked up by KTS’s servers.
I lifted my arm. “Take it out.”
Instead of listening to me, Dan lifted his own arm and sliced the spot just on the inside of his elbow. He hissed in pain, and I glared as blood dripped out of the open wound.
“Why’d you do that?” I exclaimed. “I’m the injured one. It doesn’t make sense to weaken the stronger of us.”
He rolled his eyes, pressing at his skin until he managed to remove the grain-sized implant. “The day I get taken down by a tiny wound is the day I turn in my agent card.”
“It makes no sense—”
Dan tore a strip from his T-shirt and handed it to me. “Tie this for me.”
I gestured to his boot. “The kit.”
“Let’s save that for now.”
My brows pulled down. “We—”
“Fine,” he said, wrapping it with one hand and bending like he was going to hold it in place with his teeth. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Fucking stubborn,” I muttered, shifting toward him. My side screamed in pain, though it felt like the bleeding had stopped—maybe there was hope for me yet. Still, moving a foot to my right was a hell of a lot easier than when I’d had to bandage myself in the van. It wasn’t easy, of course, not with my ankle feeling more like a sausage stuck in its casing with each passing moment.
Par
t of me was aware that Dan didn’t actually need me to tie the strip of cotton. He’d most certainly managed many times over the years. This was his way of keeping me focused and moving and making sure that I continued looking forward.
Sometimes the only thing that got people out of a tough situation was to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Create a list of tasks.
Accomplish them.
Step 1: remove one of our GPS trackers. Check.
Step 2: get it outside, in case the one remaining in my arm couldn’t broadcast its signal through rocks.
I tied off the bandage, making sure it was tight enough that the bleeding would stop as quickly as possible then reclined flat onto the floor to conserve my energy.
“Thanks,” Dan murmured, moving to the opening. He shoved his fingers through.
Just as I heard footsteps on the floor.
“They’re coming back,” I hissed.
He nodded, pulling back and grabbing the sliver of stone and sticking it into place. The space immediately filled with darkness, and I felt my breath catch. Dark. Days in this cell. No one coming to help me. All alone.
His hand wrapped around mine.
And the tight feeling in my lungs eased.
Step 3: find a way to get out of this shithole.
Heart thudding, I handed Dan the small knife. “For when the time comes.”
His fingers squeezed mine, and he pocketed it. “We’ll get out of here. It’ll be fi—”
Optimistic wasn’t exactly what I was feeling at this moment, but I wasn’t going to waste any more time worrying about the past, about what might happen. I needed to focus on being strong and on thinking about the next step, and—
I needed to live in the fucking present.
Yanking his hand, I tugged him toward me. Dan came, rolling easily, supporting his weight on his elbows, his body poised over mine.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Kiss me.”
Then, not bothering to wait for his response, I slanted my lips across his.
It was the wrong time. It was stupid and irresponsible behavior for an agent, especially when footsteps were barreling down upon us, when people who wanted to hurt us would be opening that cell door.
