by Kaylea Cross
It felt like an invisible fist shoved through Megan’s chest to crush her heart in its grip. She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat, unsure what to say. She’d never had a father. Not one she could remember, anyway. She’d never had anyone, until him.
“You’re the only family I’ve ever had,” she told him softly, her heart pounding at the sense of vulnerability the admission caused. She would never bare herself that way for anyone but him.
He stilled, his hand frozen on Karas’s soft head. Then he cleared his throat, still avoiding her gaze. “You should get some sleep. Trainin’ starts at oh-five-hundred. And once they find that hacker, you’ll be in the air almost immediately, so you need to be ready.”
She knew a dismissal when she heard one, and besides that, he was right. “All right. Good night.”
“Night, lass.”
She paused at the door to look back at him. He was still seated behind the desk, his bad leg stretched out, Karas at his side. And yet she could all but feel the loneliness surrounding him. The self-imposed isolation born of trauma and survivor’s guilt. Once she left, he would have no one.
For so long she’d been taught not to feel, not to trust. But she did both of those things with him.
“Want me to bring you a cup of tea?” she asked.
His dark eyes slid to her, and warmth chased away the shadows there. “Aye, a proper brew would be grand.”
All was forgiven, and any remaining awkwardness banished. “Back in a minute,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.
She hadn’t known jack shit about tea when she’d first come here, had thought the Brit fondness for it was something made up and perpetuated for TV and movies. Marcus loved it, though Yorkshire tea only, and gold if possible. Now she knew exactly how to make it the way he liked. Most evenings she’d make one for him while they sat in his study together, reading. They didn’t need to talk. Just being in the same room was enough for the both of them.
After delivering Marcus his tea she crept upstairs. The lights were off when she started down the hallway to her room at the south side of the house, both guest room doors closed, the occupants presumably asleep—or pretending to be.
She closed her bedroom door and crossed to the quilt-covered, queen-size bed tucked under the dark, Tudor-era beams in the ceiling. As much as she loved Marcus and as welcome as he’d made her feel here, this wasn’t her home, it was his. Once she left here, she would probably never come back.
The thought left an aching, hollow void in the center of her chest.
Chapter Four
She was being watched.
Amber kept her pace steady and looked straight ahead as she walked along Prague’s cobbled streets back to the rental unit she’d just checked into. Whoever it was, they were good, because she hadn’t spotted them yet.
But not as good as her.
She took a winding route through the historic city center, threading her way down narrow alleys and a crowd gathered for a summer farmer’s market in a square. A few blocks after that, the tingling sensation at her nape diminished. She risked a glance behind her, searching her surroundings, but didn’t spot anyone watching.
Someone was definitely out there, though, and they were persistent. She’d felt it during her final night in Kiev, and last night here in Prague. Maybe someone the U.S. government had sent to keep tabs on her.
Or maybe something far deadlier.
She didn’t dwell on that. Death came for everyone eventually and she’d already surpassed the life expectancy for someone like her.
Satisfied that she’d lost her tenacious tail for now, she took the long way back to her rental unit. At the wrought iron gate she paused to ensure her anti-trespassing device was still intact. It appeared untouched and her custom-made app hadn’t sent her an alert that someone had triggered it, so chances were no one had tried to enter this way. Still, she maintained her vigilance as she took the back stairs up to the third floor as dusk fell.
The nearly invisible wires she’d placed on the door were still in place. And when she cracked it open, the edge of it hit the stacked drinking glasses she’d set up before leaving.
She eased the door open enough to slip through and locked it behind her. Out of habit she reached back and curled her fingers around the grip of the pistol hidden in the waistband of her jeans while she swept the place, room by room. Everything was exactly as she’d left it, the blinds and curtains drawn.
Another reprieve. She wasn’t counting on getting many more.
With her perimeter secure, she was as safe as she was going to get. She’d moved mostly at night recently, so she needed to change things up to avoid setting a pattern. Tomorrow she would wipe this place clean and move again—in the daytime. For now…
Time to get back to work.
In the bedroom she booted up one of her laptops, using a custom VPN she’d designed to conceal her IP address. It wouldn’t allow her to hide forever, but a moving target was harder to hit and she never spent more than one night in the same location. As long as she kept moving, kept a step ahead of whoever was after her, she still had time to get the next part of her mission completed.
A quick search gave her the information she’d been hoping for, this time from a British news site.
Woman’s body found in the Moskva River yesterday. Police say the unidentified female was weighed down by concrete slabs. Cause of death is unknown but an autopsy is underway, and the circumstances surrounding her death point to organized crime. The investigation is ongoing.
Triumph pulsed through her. A fitting end for Zoya, the mastermind of the plot that had almost cost Amber her life. One more traitorous Valkyrie down. Several more to go, and most of those wheels were already in motion.
She checked her most recent fake email account, smiled to herself when she saw the encrypted response from the people she’d contacted yesterday before leaving Kiev.
Awaiting further instruction.
They were ready to give her what she wanted, both in payment and end result.
Transfer 250,000 USD to the following account, she typed back.
Only once the full amount was received would she provide them the intel they wanted in return.
While she waited she monitored her security perimeter and continued searching the web for more talk about her latest victim. If this breaking news story was true, then she was almost halfway to her goal.
Five down. Six to go.
First this remaining Valkyrie operative who had sold her out and left her to die. Then the people responsible for the destruction of her and so many others’ lives.
A soft ding interrupted the silence, alerting her to a new email. From the Bermudian bank she was using for the transfer.
She checked the account. The full amount was now in her offshore account, buried in a series of fake shell corporations that would take months for investigators to unravel—if they managed to ID her in the first place.
Second worst-case scenario, in a matter of weeks or months this mission would be over and she’d be living a new life somewhere on an island in Greece or Croatia. Somewhere warm where she could blend in, on the other side of the world from the evil people who had created and betrayed her.
Worst case, she’d be dead before any of that happened. But until she drew her last breath, she was going after her own kind of vengeance.
Sifting through her files, she pulled up the personal information on her current target. A Valkyrie specializing in sabotage, who had recently infiltrated a criminal organization in Syria with both government and terrorist ties.
Using an encrypted program she’d designed, Amber sent her most recent customer the woman’s name, image, and all the sensitive intel contained within the Valkyrie personnel files Amber had hacked from the program while the corrupt government officials responsible for it all scrambled to shut it down.
Staring hard at the woman’s picture, resolve hardened inside her. Hannah Miller had been one of the Valkyr
ies who had betrayed Amber on that op weeks ago. She deserved to die, and what better way to achieve that than to leak her top-secret files to the very people she’d been sent to destroy in Syria.
Amber hit send and immediately put Hannah out of her mind. As far as she was concerned, the traitor was already dead. It was just a matter of time now, and all Amber had to do was sit back and watch it happen.
Immediately she began plotting out her next task. Starting with identifying the people involved in the conception and inner workings of the Valkyrie Program.
Amber had suffered because of them. They all had.
Sacrifices had to be made, costs endured. She would see this through no matter what, even if it meant her own death. At least then she would die with a clear conscience.
For now… All that mattered now was making sure the people who had betrayed her paid for what they’d done.
****
“Too slow. You need to be quicker,” Marcus chastised, shifting to the left and changing the position of the hand targets he held. Karas was snoozing over in the corner of the gym.
Megan bit back the retort she wanted to snap at him and dragged her forearm across her sweat-slick forehead, her boxing gloves held close to her face. She loved the way he spoke, the cadence of his speech and his endearing Yorkshire dialect, but right now he was seriously pissing her off.
She narrowed her focus to those targets, met every move they made with the full force of her body behind each punch.
“Better. Now add a spinnin’ hook kick at the end.”
She didn’t answer, merely went back into fighting stance to await the next combination he called. Her body was tired, but revved. She craved this. The release of the pent up energy that always burned inside her. Marcus had been right last night. She’d needed purpose again. More than she’d realized or been willing to admit.
When they’d first started doing this soon after her arrival here, she’d been reluctant to train with him, and had taken it easy on him because of his leg. But Marcus was a proud, stubborn man and had quickly disabused her of any notion of him being hampered by his injury.
He’d put her on her ass time and time again, proving he was more than able to hold his own with her, bum leg or not. She respected his skill and his time, his dedication to helping her. He didn’t owe her anything, no matter what he might think.
“Again,” he commanded when she’d finished the next round.
He was hard on her, but nowhere near as hard as most of her Valkyrie trainers had been. And unlike them, he was always fair. She loved that about him, because that quality had been rare in the people she’d known throughout her life.
Life isn’t fair, Megan. You’re a fucking Valkyrie. A weapon. Forget that for one moment, drop your guard even an inch, and you’ll wind up dead.
They’d drilled that lesson into her head over and over again until it consumed her, helping turn her from an average trainee in the pipeline into exactly what they wanted—a finely honed weapon. A weapon with highly specific skills she’d shown an aptitude for early on.
She completed the series of punishing combinations until her muscles burned and she was panting as though she’d just sprinted for a mile.
“That’s enough for you now,” Marcus said, his tone almost frustrated as he lowered his hands.
It stung. Sure she wasn’t at peak physical form like she’d been when they’d first met, but she was still in damn good shape and she hated the thought of him ever being disappointed in her. “No. Let’s go again,” she argued, struggling to catch her breath.
He regarded her with a doubtful expression, then shook his head and started to take off the hand targets. “That’s enough for today.”
“No, it’s—”
“I’m up for some sparring if you want.”
Her spine stiffened at the deep voice behind her.
Keeping her expression neutral, she turned around to face Tyler. He was in shorts and a black workout shirt that stretched across the muscles of his chest and shoulders. It annoyed her that she even noticed them. “You just get up?”
“No. Been up since dawn going over a few things with Trinity.”
What things? She held the words back. She’d find out what she needed to know later. “Spare gloves are in that trunk over there.” She jerked her chin across the gym the previous owner had built in the old carriage house across the back courtyard from the main house.
“Good, because I’m starvin’,” Marcus said, and walked off with Karas, his cane thudding against the floor with each step. He’d be in pain from what they’d just done, but he’d rather die than show or give into it. She loved that about him too. Marcus was an honest-to-God badass.
Megan used the few minutes it took for Tyler to wrap his hands and get his gloves on to let her heart rate recover. By the time he stepped onto the mats with her, she was ready to give her all again.
“How long have you been at it already?” he asked.
“An hour.” More, but who was counting?
He reached his gloves out toward her. “Come on. Tap.” He wiggled them, giving her what he probably thought was an adorable grin.
The grin might be adorable but he wasn’t, because he sucked for what he’d done to her and she wasn’t ready to forgive him for it. Even if in his mind he’d only been doing his job back then.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she tapped and stepped back with her right foot, raising her gloves close to either side of her face as she tucked her chin in. “Let’s go.”
He started off slow. Insultingly slow, and with even more insulting gentleness, pulling his punches as if she couldn’t handle him.
She used the next thirty minutes to show him otherwise, getting in several body shots and almost one to the side of his head when he wasn’t quick enough to block it. He danced back, gave her an assessing look and came at her again, this time with more effort. She went on the attack, while he struggled to protect himself and keep up.
But she was tiring fast, her muscles depleted and aching. Growing weaker with each passing moment.
She moved too slow. Failed to block the quick jab he threw.
Her head snapped back with the impact, momentarily stunning her and sending her to her knees.
“Shit, sorry,” he blurted, and immediately reached out to help her up.
More than failing to block the punch, his rush to rescue her triggered buried insecurities she’d kept locked down for years.
Gritting her teeth, Megan swept her top leg out and took his feet out from under him, satisfaction rolling through her when he toppled over and hit the floor.
He grinned. Freaking grinned.
They were both on their feet again in an instant, staring at one another and breathing hard.
She refused to be the first to look away. “Don’t ever treat me as if I’m weaker than you just because I’m a female,” she warned, heart pounding as she battled the age-old enemy of self-doubt.
You’re weak because you’re a woman. And you won’t get special treatment here. You’re nothing until you earn that mark. You hear me? Nothing.
The trainer’s voice echoed in her mind, his snarling face crystal clear as he held her by the throat against the wall and forced her to watch while a Valkyrie graduate received her “mark” on her left hip. She blinked, forcing the memory away, and refocused on Tyler. She’d earned her mark and was damn proud to bear it. Why did she feel the need to prove herself to anyone?
Tyler’s grin vanished. His jaw tightened, then he nodded once. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Am I interrupting?” a female voice said from the doorway.
They both turned to face Trinity, looking gorgeous in a snug, plum wrap-style summer dress and heels. Sweat trickled down Megan’s face and between her breasts. “No,” she muttered, taking off her gloves.
“Okay, then.” Trinity glanced between them. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Bad,” Tyler said
, ditching his own gloves.
“Our suspect struck again. Another Valkyrie was murdered, this time in Russia. Her body was found in the Moskva River, weighed down by concrete slabs. Russian mob’s our best guess right now. We think she’d infiltrated their organization several months ago.”
Dammit. That made five dead Valkyries. How many more were going to die before their team got a break and a solid piece of intel?
“So, what’s the good news?” Megan asked, wiping the back of her wrapped hand across her forehead.
“We got a possible location on our suspect.”
She stilled, hope and excitement spreading through her. “Where?”
“Prague. But it’s going to be a tight window, and the trail might already have gone cold.” That deep blue gaze swept over them both. “Ready or not, as of now we’re all on the clock. Our flight leaves in forty minutes.”
Chapter Five
Megan waited until after takeoff to make her move. She unbuckled her seatbelt and strode up the narrow aisle in the private jet she wasn’t sure who was paying for, heading for Trinity, who was essentially Megan’s handler for this mission.
Trinity glanced up from the intel reports she was reviewing. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Megan scooted past her and took the plush seat beside the window.
Trinity set the tablet in her lap and raised a coal-black eyebrow. “Something on your mind?”
“Yeah. How are you tracking the suspect?”
“Rycroft’s got a couple of his best analysts monitoring chatter, watching money transfers and trying to match the Valkyries in our personnel files with facial recognition software. Once they get a possible hit they follow up with security footage from various places, sometimes satellites or even other countries’ security databases. From there they narrow down possible target locations, and we hit the most promising ones.”
