Remi went down on his knees next to me, his hand palm up as he offered it to Diesel. “He’s a little iffy about the crowd, but I think he’ll come around to staying with us.”
“We don’t need any more additions to the crowd,” Levi growled. He planted his feet in front of me, arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t think he could intimidate me with the bulging biceps anymore, did he? ’Cause that hero-worship shit had faded a long fucking time ago.
Remi planted his hand on the floor and stared up at our brother. “You asshole.”
Genuine shock crossed Levi’s face, his gray eyes going wide. “What?”
Remi pushed to his feet. “You said you were fine with Leah and Brooke moving in.”
“I am.”
Remi didn’t miss the slight rise in Levi’s tone any more than I did.
“Obviously you aren’t.” Remi’s eyes darkened with hurt. “If my family isn’t good enough for you—”
Levi frowned. “Shut the hell up.”
“No.” Remi wasn’t above using his bulk in an argument, and he did so now, pushing into Levi’s space. “You better get your head out of your ass, brother. Leah and Brooke and my baby are here to stay, and if you don’t like it—”
Levi held up a hand. “Save it. I’ve already had one brother threaten to leave this week.”
Remi glanced at me, at Diesel, and approval warmed his icy expression. “Good. You were the boss for a long time, Levi. I get that. But we grew up, and our families are just as important as yours. They have every right to be here, like it or not.” The approval faded away, replaced by deadly resolve. “And if not, bury that shit deep. We don’t deserve it, and neither do they.”
Levi dragged a hand down his face, rubbed at the scruff on his chin. “A dog isn’t the same as family.”
“Why?” Remi scoffed. “Because you never wanted one?”
Time to stop the infighting. I appreciated Remi standing up for me, but I didn’t need it—and we had more important things to think about. “He’s my family, Levi,” I said, the words clipped. And final. “I told you that, and I have no intention of repeating it every time you see him. If you can’t accept that, you know what the consequences are. And given what’s going on, you need me, whether you know it or not.”
“What’s going on?” Remi asked.
Turning to the computer, I pulled up the e-mail we’d received from Mr. X. “Have a look.”
It took ten seconds before Remi’s “Holy shit!” hit my ears. Levi took slightly longer, long enough to get through the entire text, and then a string of nasty curses rent the air.
“My thoughts exactly,” I said.
“This came in when?” Remi asked.
I braced myself. “Two days ago.”
“Holy fuck.” Levi twisted on his heel to pace across the room, then back. “Why are we just hearing about this now?”
I shrugged. “You were busy.”
Remi tightened arms tight across his chest, his knuckles white against his inked biceps. “You could’ve come to me, Eli.”
And I’d known that. “I could.” Remi no doubt understood why I hadn’t. “I wanted to wait until it was absolutely necessary.”
“What finally made it necessary?” Levi barked on his second lap of the room. I didn’t miss the sarcastic twist on finally.
I turned my back on Levi’s anger and clicked the mouse a couple of times. The e-mail closed, and my image program appeared on-screen. “This.”
Levi and Remi stared at the pictures of the team I’d encountered at the restaurant while I related what had happened. Their low curses went unacknowledged. I’d known what I was doing was risky; I’d done it anyway. End of story. In their heads my brothers knew I was as capable as they were—Levi had made sure of that when he trained me. In their guts, though, both of them had a hard time accepting that.
“I figured, just low-level surveillance, you know? I didn’t know there was another team tracking the target.”
Levi didn’t reprimand me for going out alone. Even he couldn’t have predicted another team. He did, however, have excellent instincts, proven when he asked, “Any chance they were there for you and not the target?”
“Unknown.” I’d considered that option as well, but I couldn’t say definitively either way given the new information I’d dug up. I clicked some more, brought up the intel I’d found on the team members. “These four members were all I caught, though there could be more. These three”—I pointed to the three shots of the men on the team—“are former Delta Force. They were mixed up in a scandal involving the possible murder of their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jay Nixon. That was five years ago.” Skimming down the page I’d pulled from military records I was not supposed to have access to—as if—I pointed to an official military portrait of Nixon. “They disappeared before formal charges could be brought against them.”
“Disappeared?” Remi asked.
“Mm.” Moving to another screen, I showed them the information I’d collected on Nixon. Halfway down the page was a picture of the fourth member of the team. “Mikaela Nixon,” I said, purposefully not looking directly at the image. I didn’t need that kick-in-the-gut reaction right now, not in front of my brothers. “She’s the lieutenant colonel’s daughter. Seems odd that she’d take up with men involved with her father’s death.” Some women gave off that whole black-widow vibe—most of them, in our world—but I hadn’t picked it up at the restaurant. A tough soldier, yes, but she hadn’t seemed like the kind of soldier with that black core. The kind that would kill a family member.
I’d had an uncle like that. He’d killed both my parents and would’ve killed my brothers and me if Levi hadn’t kept us safe. You could never know another person a hundred percent, but my gut said Mikaela wasn’t the type.
Of course, my gut was having issues since I’d first seen her, so...
I reached down to pet Diesel where he lay next to my feet. The feel of his fur beneath my fingers settled me in a way I’d never experienced before, and suddenly I understood that scene in the Grinch cartoon where the ugly green guy’s heart grew larger and larger in size.
Remi straightened, pulling my attention back to the conversation. “So there’s a four-member team, minimum. What’s their objective?”
“Protecting the target?” Levi asked.
“I don’t think they were protecting Sullivan,” I said. “First, though there is a record of Sullivan hiring security, it was a known firm and only for special events, not lunch in Buckhead. Second, all four of them came at me, leaving the target in the dining room. There could be more team members who stayed behind, but...” That answer just didn’t feel right.
Levi started to pace again, more slowly. I could practically see the wheels turning. “Makes sense. What else?”
“They could be working for X, making sure we’re following through,” I suggested, ignoring the foul taste that rose to the back of my tongue.
“The man isn’t asking.”
Levi’s words ended in a growl. I understood the anger—X wasn’t simply a threat to the three of us. Having our identities revealed would harm everything we’d built the last year. Give us time to get the smallest lead on him, and he wouldn’t be alive long enough to collect.
He. I’d bought into the “he must be a man” thing too. I looked directly at Mikaela’s image a moment, my gut cramping. Was she X? But then, why ask about him at the restaurant? They’d hammered that question into our convo more than once.
It could’ve been an act, but it hadn’t felt like one. The way Redhead had vibrated with anger when he’d questioned me resembled Levi a little too closely right now.
Remi scratched the weekend stubble on his chin. “X could be forcing them to work for him, either targeting Sullivan or us.”
“But why would he need us working for him if he has them at his fingertips?”
“We’re not working for the bastard,” Levi growled again.
“Not what I meant, and you
know it,” I growled right back.
Levi muttered a not so nice name under his breath.
Remi ignored the byplay, staring at the images on the monitor, and like Levi, I could practically see him turning the puzzle pieces over in his mind. “Back up. The first question is, are they independent or still working military somehow?”
“Military would mean they were some blacker-than-black-ops unit,” Levi pointed out. “Their records burned to cover deep-cover shit. Makes them extremely dangerous.”
“And if they’re not military,” I added, “they’ve evaded the best of the best for five years.”
We shared a look, caution and question and tension all rolled into one.
Remi squatted down. Diesel eased closer to him with a whimper, offering his head for petting. My brother ran his fingers through the dog’s short black fur. “They’re on the run, like you said, Eli. Someone knowing who they were would be a powerful weapon to get them to do what X wants. It makes sense that, like us, they’re being blackmailed into this.”
“What’s ‘this,’ though?” Levi asked.
“It might not matter,” I said as a slow kernel of an idea sparked in my head. “If they don’t want to do this any more than we do...”
Levi grunted. “Divide and conquer.”
“Right.” Remi straightened. “Make contact and find out exactly what’s going on, and if they aren’t with X willingly—”
“Get them on our side.” Contact with Mikaela. Real contact. Anticipation began a sharp buzz beneath my skin. “Work together to get rid of this bastard, whoever he is.” I met Levi’s eyes. “They’re dangerous, bro. They’re wanted for involvement in the death of an officer; no way Delta Force has stopped looking for them, even after five years. They’re not gonna sit down for tea with us.”
“No, they won’t,” he agreed. He narrowed his gaze on Remi. “We’ll need you for this, brother.”
Remi looked torn. He’d committed to Leah and their child, and that meant not taking unnecessary risks. But he knew as well as we did that a four-member team of mercenaries of this caliber was nothing to fool around with. We needed him.
“I’m sorry,” Levi said in the heavy, waiting silence.
“Why?” Remi asked.
I caught the skimming of his eyes over Diesel before meeting Remi’s again. “Because I’m asking you to choose between the security of your family and the safety of your brothers.”
Remi closed his eyes. “I’m not choosing between you. We’re family, period. All of us.” When his eyelids lifted, determination stared out at us. “When do we start?”
I looked to the monitor, to the image of Mikaela Nixon. Reached out to tap the screen. “She’s in charge.”
Levi slapped me on the back. “Let’s find her then.”
Chapter Eleven
Nix —
I made my way carefully down the creaky metal stairs, trying to avoid the screeches that were sure to wake the rest of my teammates this early in the morning. My goal was in the kitchen—I knew because the scent of coffee permeated the downstairs of the warehouse already. Rhys was on watch the second half of the night. The man might not be able to cook worth a damn, but his coffee kicked ass and took names.
His look as I wandered in wasn’t the least bit surprised. The cup waiting empty in front of the coffeepot only reinforced how well he knew me. Whenever things got rough, when I couldn’t sleep because my brain wouldn’t stop turning over stones to find a solution to a problem, it was Rhys I sought out. He was more than willing to be my sounding board when I needed it.
I poured the rich black elixir into my cup and brought it to my nose, the scent perking up my senses enough to cut through the fog a sleepless night had gifted me.
“You look like shit,” Rhys said, too good-naturedly for a man who’d gotten half a night’s sleep. Without moving my coffee cup away from my face, I raised my middle finger and pointed it in his direction.
“You’re welcome.” His smile was obscured as he drank from his own cup. There wasn’t a table in the long galley kitchen, or I’d have suggested we sit down before I fell down. Or Rhys would have. As it was, we both leaned, me against one counter and him against the opposite, relishing the coffee as our thoughts—or at least my thoughts—raced.
“What does your gut tell you about Elijah Agozi?” I finally asked.
Rhys thought the question over, taking his time. I fought the need to shake his opinion out of him.
“I think he and his brothers do everything together. I also think he has an awful lot to lose.”
So they were a team. My gut said the same. “We have a lot to lose too.”
Rhys made a noncommittal noise. “Coincidence? Or not?”
Was it?
“We have to make a move, Nix.”
I shot him a wry glance over the rim of my cup. “You guys are not getting out of the hard stuff that easily. You know how it works: we make decisions together or not at all.” I might be “in charge,” but we were a team, period. Even Maris voted.
Rhys’s serious eyes went light as he grinned, and some of the worry weighing me down lifted. “Come on, Nix, step up to the plate. Be a man for once.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t stop a laugh into my coffee. “I’m very proudly not a man, asshole.” I might’ve been raised much like a boy would be—my father had been a career soldier with no idea what to do with a little girl on his own, and he’d raised me like he raised his soldiers—but manhood wasn’t something I’d ever aspired to.
For a moment the memory of Dad, solid and safe, wrapped me in its arms. He’d given me every skill he knew I’d need. I had to remember that.
The coffee I sipped hit my tongue with a punch of flavor. “Okay, decisions.” Another sip. “Our options are: move forward with the target. That would satisfy X and keep you guys safe.”
Rhys snorted. “Only temporarily. Men like that use the information eventually. And don’t forget, you and Maris are at risk too.”
Because we’d sheltered men wanted for a murder they hadn’t committed. For myself, I’d risk it. Not for Maris.
“He’ll use it when we’re no longer useful, so really we’re just buying time.” I nibbled my bottom lip. “And running won’t erase the fact that he seems to have access that enables him to find us.”
Rhys tipped his cup at me. “If he’s done it once, he can do it again.”
He was right, not that I’d say it aloud. From the curve of his lips, Rhys knew exactly what I was thinking.
When that curve flattened, I braced myself. “You and Maris could run,” he said.
I swear my eyes bugged out. “That is not an option, Rhys. Ever.”
He stared down into the cup he was swirling. “It’s something you have to consider, and you know it. Traveling alone makes the two of you a lot less conspicuous.” He shifted against the cabinet. “You can keep Maris safe.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why he cared, but I bit back the words. Rhys and Maris’s relationship was a lot more complicated than the others realized, even than Maris realized, but doing a deep dive into that subject would have to wait. “Maris is capable of keeping herself safe if it comes to that. She might not like it, but she can do it.” She didn’t fight not because she couldn’t, but because her heart wasn’t in it—and heart was a big part of being a good fighter. “Regardless, I’m not abandoning you, and neither would Maris. Next option.”
Rhys frowned at me. I ignored it.
“We can keep on the path we’ve started, going after X,” I said when he continued his tight-lipped routine. “Taking the fight to the enemy is what we do.” This situation would be just like any other if the men weren’t concerned about X’s ability to find them, and us. But continuing on the course we’d already set made the most sense to me. “What if—”
The buzz of my phone cut me off. I slid it from the back of my fatigues to take a look.
Everything in me went still. “Well, speak of the devil
.”
Rhys pushed away from the counter, crossing to peek over my shoulder. “X?”
“X.” I assumed, anyway. Not too many messages sent from ‘Anonymous’ hitting my in-box. I tapped to open the e-mail.
Ms. Nixon,
Given your history, I had high expectations for the performance of your team. Those expectations have not been met, as forward progress on your target appears to have stalled after only five days.
In light of this disappointment, intel on your team’s location will be handed over to the appropriate authorities in seventy-two hours. To forestall that action, you know what to do.
X
I stared at that line—will be handed over to the appropriate authorities in seventy-two hours—each word a bass-drum thump in my throat. X was no idiot; he knew we were stalling, and he was calling our bluff.
Which left us with only one clear choice.
“Wake up the others, Rhys.”
He set his coffee cup on the counter behind me and took my shoulders in his big hands, turning me to face him. “Nix...”
I shook my head. “Rhys.” I smiled, but even I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “I’ll be damned if I give him what he wants.”
“So we’re approaching the Agozis then.”
We’d known Elijah Agozi’s identity for a day and a half, had surveillance on the Agozi mansion for close to twenty-four hours. “It’s time we find out if they’re for or against us.”
His blue eyes narrowed, turning hard. “And if they’re on X’s side?”
“Then we eliminate them before they can follow us.” I ignored the pang of regret at the thought of Elijah. He and his brothers were, to all appearances, home-grown mercenaries. They couldn’t hold a candle to my team. “And we’ll have exhausted all avenues before we run.”
Two hours later we sat in an SUV a couple of miles from the estate.
“You’re not going in alone, Nix.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Maris, sitting cross-legged in the cargo area of the vehicle. Her attention was supposed to be on the laptop in front of her, watching the roads outside the immediate surveillance area for any interference. Instead she stared back at me.
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