by Trish Loye
What the fuck had his ex gotten herself into now?
He took a deep breath to clear his mind of emotions. They wouldn’t help him now. He pulled out his cell and dialed his cousin’s personal number. Thankfully, he answered. Once Ryan explained what he needed, Dante said he was in between missions and good to go. He’d be on the next flight to DC.
That done, Ryan put his phone away and went back into his HQ. He let Stan go and then sent Mack and Tony to the crime scenes. They could pull rank and scour the apartment and car for any evidence.
He told Lexi, the tech specialist, to track down Sutton’s credit and bank cards, and to trace her cell. He had Edworthy and Phil tracking down Costa’s movements for the last forty-eight hours.
He took out his cell again and debated. It had been years since he’d spoken to Sutton. He’d never thought he’d see her again, and if he did fantasize about seeing her, it was an image of her walking toward him on his beach, a smile on her face and the wind in her hair. She’d tell him she’d retired and she wanted to share his beach with him.
He snorted.
Sutton would never want to share anything with him. She’d want full control of it. He’d have to fight her every day to make sure she didn’t take over.
Was that why they hadn’t worked out? Both of them were too controlling?
Or maybe she was never the person he’d thought she was. She had been a top CIA agent. Someone who could slip into and out of personalities as if she were trying on clothes. Maybe he’d never really known Sutton.
He gripped the phone tighter. No. He had to believe that when they’d been together, it had been real.
Then why was he hunting her for murder and treason?
He punched in the number he’d gotten from the file and tried not to think about how his heart thudded like it had when he’d asked out a girl for the first time.
Sutton paced her apartment. The small space felt like a cage. Costa had been killed. Mark had been killed. She looked like a suspect. What the fuck was going on?
A digital ringtone startled her from her thoughts. She glanced at her watch. An hour had passed. Did Tony have something already? The name of the caller was blocked. She frowned and swiped her cell on.
“McRaven.”
“Sutton?”
Everything stopped. Her world, her thoughts, her breath.
It was him.
Had thinking of him earlier conjured him? Was she still dreaming?
“Sutton?” Ryan’s voice reflected concern.
“I’m here,” she said softly. And now it was her turn to listen to almost silent breathing. “Ryan? It’s...” It’s been too long. It’s been forever. She swallowed those words. “It’s nice to hear from you.”
“I’ve been thinking about you.” His voice held so many hints of what he was feeling, but too many. She couldn’t dissect it without seeing his face.
“Really? Why?”
“Can’t I think about a beautiful woman?”
She laughed, but something inside her stepped back and analyzed. He hadn’t seen her in years. Something wasn’t right. “Okay then,” she said. “Why now? It’s been years, Ryan.”
“I’m in DC,” he said. “I’m...a consultant. I teach leadership to suits.”
“Really? Don’t tell me you’re bored of your beach.”
He sighed. “I needed something more.” A pause. “I’ve missed you.”
He missed her? And he blurted it out, just like that? Something was definitely not right. She went to the window and edged the curtain aside, peered out, uncertain what she was looking for, but obeying the instinct. “You have a funny way of showing it,” she said quietly. “The last thing you said to me was that you couldn’t be with a woman who chose her career over family.” Even though that’s what you did.
The street held a few parked cars, but nothing unusual.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” The defensive tone in his voice sounded real. The first real thing in the conversation.
“Then how did you mean it? Because it seemed to me like you wanted me to quit but you wouldn’t even consider doing what you asked of me.” She sighed. “Let’s not fight about it again.”
There was a long enough pause that she wondered whether he’d hung up.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I did ask unfair things of you. I just saw all my friends settling down with wives who held down the home front and I wanted...”
She looked at the ceiling, blinking away the moisture that had suddenly gathered. She would not regret her decisions. “I understand, but that was never who I was.”
“I know that now,” he said. “And...I knew it then too.”
“You were just too stubborn to admit it.”
He laughed and it lightened something in her. Could they heal their breach? She almost rolled her eyes. She had no time to be thinking of this. She couldn’t start anything with Ryan or even follow up on this conversation until Mark’s killer was found.
She frowned. Ryan distracted her so very easily. Too easily. And the timing of the call was too coincidental.
“So how do you like consulting?” she asked, keeping her tone light. “Do you still spend a lot of time at your beach?”
“I enjoy the teaching. And my beach...no demands, no cares, no worries. Life is great.”
Liar, she thought. Something wasn’t right. “So, you’re a part-time teacher and part-time beach bum?”
He laughed and she heard so much more than she was sure he wanted her to.
She froze for just a moment as she remembered something Tony had said. Her heart did a nose dive. They’d brought in a Navy SEAL commander to lead the team. A team that was tracking down a traitor. She didn’t know why, but she’d bet all of her savings that Ryan was that SEAL and that he was tracking her.
Shit, they thought she did it. They thought that she’d killed Mark and Costa. Panic speared her. Would they even listen to her if she went in to tell her side of the story?
Someone knocked on her door.
Her heart stopped. Fuck. He was already here.
“Why are you tracking me, Ryan?” she whispered. She went to her hall closet and grabbed her leather jacket and her go-bag—a backpack filled with essentials to survive a quick evac. Next, she snagged her personal laptop from the table and shoved it into the protective sheath inside the backpack. “Do you really think I could kill my friend?”
“Why don’t you let me bring you in? I’ll make sure you get the best lawyer.”
She sucked in a breath, staring at the door. She cursed silently and then pulled a rope ladder from beneath her couch. “You think I’m guilty.”
“I don’t know what to think, Sutts. But you ran from a crime scene. You’ve got to explain that.”
The knock sounded again. She went to the window behind her small dining table, opened it and attached the ladder to the sill.
“Screw you,” she said, her voice a quiet hiss. “If you want in here, you’re going to have to break the door down.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her temper flared and she let the ladder roll out. “Don’t play coy. I know you’re standing outside my door.”
“Sutton,” Ryan said, his voice calm and serious, his SEAL commander voice. “I promise you. That’s not me at your door.”
Shit.
Sutton snapped her gaze to the door. It slammed open. She had a split second to see a figure in black throw something into the room. It landed with a thud and rolled a couple of feet toward her. She moved before her mind even fully registered the object.
Grenade.
She heaved her dining table over and dove behind it, covering her head and neck. The concussive boom lifted her and the table, flinging them both back. She hit the wall and cracked her head. She blinked. What the hell had just happened?
Move.
Someone had just tried to kill her. She didn’t know who, but someone had just thrown a fucking grenade into her apartment.
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Move. She had to move now.
Training brought her into a crouch. She couldn’t hear a damn thing except for a tinny rushing noise in her ears. Smoke filled the room. She blinked and coughed.
A red laser light swept against the far wall.
A targeting scope. The killer was inside and looking to finish his job.
Move!
Smoke billowed her way. Something was on fire. She coughed again and looked up behind her. The window now had jagged pieces of glass framing it like shark teeth.
She shouldered the backpack then heaved herself up and out the window, praying she wouldn’t cut herself too badly on any shards of glass left lodged in the window well. She didn’t have time to clear it out.
She went down the rope ladder as fast as possible, knowing the killer would find it in moments. She dropped the last five feet and rolled, diminishing the impact of the fall, but she knew she’d feel it later.
“I am too old for this shit,” she muttered and ran. She didn’t go for her car, thinking that whoever was after her would either expect that or have booby-trapped her vehicle. She needed to regroup and reassess the situation before she made any decisions.
So she ran a couple of blocks and caught a bus that happened by. She sat in a window seat at the back and caught her breath.
What the hell was happening? Had that been one of Ryan’s team, or the same person who’d killed Mark? And who had killed Costa?
She almost considered going to her sister, but if she went to see her sister at the police station, the police would keep her locked up for hours while they tried to sort through her story. And there was no way she was going to her sister’s house. Sophie was probably already home from school. If Sutton had some kind of killer after her, she would never bring him close to her family.
Sutton rode the bus until the sun set while she calmed herself and made her plan.
5
That evening, Ryan surveyed the damage to Sutton’s living room. He’d gotten there after the fire department had finished putting out the flames. His stomach twisted. Had she been in the room when the explosion had happened?
He cleared his throat. “Any casualties?” he asked a fireman near him. Please, no.
“No,” the fireman said, and relief coursed through Ryan like cool water, easing the sharp pang of his fears. The fireman pointed to a spot closer to the door. “But it looked like a bomb of some sort went off.”
And a bomb was what it had sounded like on the phone. He’d almost lost his shit when the connection had died. “I’ll need a copy of your report when you’re done.”
“You got it.”
Ryan went through the rest of the apartment. The acrid scent of burnt plastic fibers and smoke residue made him want to sneeze. Sutton had gotten out. He found the rope ladder hanging out the window.
He frowned. So she’d been prepared for a fast escape. Did that mean she’d known the explosion was coming? Had she blown up the apartment, thinking he was at the door? The charred furniture gave him no answers. He ran a hand over the back of his neck and his gaze caught on the table. It lay on its side near the window.
It faced the explosion. Someone would have had to tip it that way, because an explosion would naturally send the table toppling away with the force. She must have hidden behind it. He surveyed the damage again. If she’d set the explosion as a trap, then she would have left via the ladder before she needed to hide behind the table.
Satisfaction gripped him. Sutton hadn’t set a trap for him. She hadn’t tried to kill him. No one would want to stay in the room with an explosion like that. She must have hid behind the table when someone had thrown something—most likely a grenade—into the room.
He walked through the rest of the apartment. The bathroom hadn’t been damaged and neither had the bedroom. He froze when he saw the giant photograph on her wall. What she looked at every night before sleep.
His beach.
She looked at a picture of his beach every night. Did she regret leaving? Or did she just like the beach?
“Sir?” Mack held up something charred, warped, and the size of a wallet. “I believe it’s the subject’s phone.”
He blinked and left the room, and that picture, and those thoughts behind. “Thanks, Mack.” He looked out the window and down the street. Where would she have gone next?
“Should we canvass the area?” Mack asked.
He shook his head. “Sutton’s too smart to be seen. Have Lexi pull up all security cameras in the area. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of them will have caught her.”
She pulled out her phone. “What’s next for us, sir?”
“We need to find out who did this. Have EOD check this site. And get Edworthy to find out if someone from his department leaked McRaven’s name. It looks like she might be the next target. Maybe she has the list and someone other than us wants it.”
“Copy that, sir. What about McRaven?”
“We have to start thinking like her and figure out what she’ll do next.”
The woman smiled wryly. “Do you want me to draw up a profile?”
He was about to say no, but he realized he no longer knew the woman he’d once loved with all his heart. “Make the profile.”
Sutton sank onto her heels beside a dumpster in an alley to get out of the wind. In the fall, the nights got colder, but at least it wasn’t raining. She didn’t plan to stay here all night. She just needed to rest without any interference. And an alley seemed as good a place as any. No security cameras and no one walking down it to ask her what she was doing.
She pulled a burner phone from her backpack and called Tony.
“Wallis,” he answered.
“Tony, it’s Sutton.”
There was the sound of a chair screeching against a floor and shuffling. “Jesus, Sutton,” he whispered. “Where the fuck are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. What do you know?”
“Everyone, and I mean everyone, is looking for you. This fancy SEAL commander means business.”
Ryan. She pressed her lips together while Tony continued to talk.
“Why don’t we meet?” he said.
“No. Someone is after me. I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.”
“Sutton, maybe you should just come in?”
Maybe she should. Her own people would protect her...wouldn’t they? Her stomach roiled and her muscles tensed. She should go in, but something was telling her not to. She must have missed some clue. “I’m not coming in.”
“What?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Let me just figure out a few things.”
He sighed. “Then tell me where you are. I can help you.”
“No. I don’t want you involved.”
“I already am. I’m part of the team.”
Fuck. “You can’t play both sides.”
“You’re my friend, Sutton. I know you didn’t do this.”
She heard the truth in his words. “Then tell me what you know. Help me that way.”
She heard him excuse himself to someone else and then the sound from wherever he was got quiet. “Okay, they think I’m talking to my girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend? But...” Anna had been his girlfriend.
He huffed. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend. It’s just what I told them so I could go into the hall to talk to you.”
Shit. “I’m sorry.” She’d said those words so many times. They weighed her down. Sometimes it felt as though she could never be sorry enough for everything in her life.
She took a deep breath. She had no time and no right to a pity party.
“I think we shouldn’t be talking, Tony. If you’re caught...” At best, he would be disciplined and maybe lose his job. At worst, he became a target like her. She couldn’t bear to lose another friend.
“I don’t care.” His voice was hard. “You need help. Tell me where you are. You can stay at my place.”
There was no way she was putting him in that kind of co
mpromising position. “No. Just find out the connection between Mark, Costa, and this list. I’ll call you back when I can.”
“Sut—”
She hung up. Time to think clearly. She needed more information, like what Mark had been working on, and who he’d last spoken to.
There was no laptop found by the police. The killer must have grabbed it. So she was left with nada.
She sank farther down and hugged herself a bit tighter. Panic hovered like a drone ready to release an explosion, but she refused to let it interfere with her thinking. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. Someone wanted her dead and he knew who she was. So she had to stay off-grid to evade him.
But did she want to evade him? She had no leads and maybe being bait would be the best way to draw him out. She almost rolled her eyes at herself. If she let her location be known, then it would be more probable that the authorities would pick her up.
She wasn’t in any position at the moment to turn the hunt around and track the killer, so she had to focus on what Mark had been working on. But she had no idea what that was. The killer had been looking for something in the apartment or he wouldn’t have stayed there so long after killing Mark.
Maybe it was still there.
She bit her lip. It seemed like her only option was to head back to his apartment and search it. Maybe she could find what the killer couldn’t. She just hoped the police had left.
“Crap. Crap. Crap.” Couldn’t she come up with anything better than going back to the scene of the crime? But she had no team to fall back on. She had no hacker, no tracker, no overwatch. This was all on her.
She stood. This was all on her. But she was a CIA agent, and she would persevere. She walked to the end of the alley, ignoring her aches and pains. She had a killer to catch.
Ryan entered his HQ. Lexi sat at her monitor, concentrating on the screen. She didn’t look up. Phil, the DHS agent, was asleep on a cot. Tony was out. Edworthy stalked up to him holding his tablet, his face grim.
