Just as I’d expected. I held the rear door open as he approached.
People entered a vehicle one of two ways: headfirst, bending down to see inside as they moved forward, with their backside literally bringing up the rear; or ass first, backing into the vehicle and looking around once they were seated. Sullivan tucked his trench coat around his body like the rich man he was and turned slightly, his ass leading the way inside. Essentially giving Mikaela his back.
Big mistake.
I watched through the gap between door and car as she struck, snakelike, the needle digging into Sullivan’s neck before he was even in the car. It took two seconds for Mikaela to depress the plunger, delivering the ketamine.
“Shit!” Instinct raised his hand, searching for the pain in his neck, turning to see what was behind him in the car. Mikaela didn’t waste time, nor did she need my help. Our target was twice her weight, taller and broader, but she slid beneath his raised arm before he realized she was there. Wrapping her arms around Sullivan’s body, front and back, she pulled him down to her. Hands clasped on the opposite side of his neck in a modified choke hold, she rammed her shoulder into the man’s armpit, then squeezed his neck between her hands and his arm. With pressure on both sides, she cut off his blood supply.
Sullivan tried to struggle, to stand, to get out of the car before it was too late, but between the drug and Mikayla, he didn’t stand a chance.
All I did was pick up his legs and push them into the car, then close the door.
“Thanks for the help, Tex,” she joked as I climbed back into the front seat.
I might’ve felt guilty if she sounded the slightest bit winded, but she wasn’t even breathing heavy. “You’re welcome.” I winked at her in the rearview mirror. Her withering glare would have made my balls run for cover if not for the seat between us.
I chuckled instead.
Maneuvering Sullivan upright drew a couple of grunts from the back seat, but Mikaela didn’t complain further as I set out for the place where we’d parked the car. After dropping her off, I waited for her to follow me, and we made our way to the rendezvous point.
The “fun house” Sullivan visited every Tuesday was a good forty-five minutes outside of Atlanta, well camouflaged in rural Georgia. Given the lateness of the hour and the location, traffic was light. I drove about fifteen minutes before I turned off the country highway onto a badly pitted side road and continued a couple of miles until Mikaela’s team’s van came into view. As soon as I flashed my headlights, both front doors opened and Titus and Remi exited.
Mikaela pulled the Corolla up behind the town car and shut it off.
“So, meet people on the dark side often?” I called as I stepped out. Remi smirked, used to my irreverence during the job. I couldn’t read Titus’s expression as he passed me, but the lack of a reflection off white teeth said he probably wasn’t impressed. He beelined it for the passenger door.
“Any word from Monty and Rhys?” Mikaela asked as she joined us.
Titus shook his head and hefted a snoozing Sullivan out of the car. “Nothing yet.”
Mikaela followed, holding Sullivan’s feet, a vee between her dark brows.
We made quick work of transferring Sullivan into the rear of the van. Remi had the driver over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, moving toward us, when Titus put up his hand.
“He’s too clean to drop on the side of the road,” Mikaela’s teammate pointed out, jerking his chin toward the driver. “No one’s gonna believe he bailed from a car without scrapes or bruises. Drop him.”
Remi’s eyes narrowed. We knew what was necessary as well as Titus did, but Titus wasn’t our leader. Giving Remi orders wasn’t going to fly if he didn’t want it to fly.
Without taking his attention from the other man, Remi dropped his burden off his back. The soggy ground lessened the driver’s impact, not that I didn’t wince. Deadweight always hit hard.
Titus shrugged. “It’s a start.”
Remi stepped aside, waved a hand at the driver. “You do the honors.”
Titus hesitated. I could see the moment he realized what he’d done, what Remi was telling him. We might be working as a team tonight, but we weren’t teammates; Titus had no more authority to give Remi orders than Remi had to give them to him. A slight smile tugged at his lips, and he acknowledged Remi’s point with a nod before reaching down to grab the driver’s collar with gloved hands.
Remi left Titus to work over the driver while he retrieved our substitute for the back seat. I turned to see Mikaela at the open back doors of the van. As I approached, I saw she was checking over Sullivan again.
“Breathing okay?” I asked.
It wasn’t like we were doctors with a complete medical history—administering sedatives to people you wanted to keep alive could be tricky business. Taking their well-being for granted wasn’t happening.
“He’s fine,” she said without looking at me, her hands running over the man’s restraints in a way that made me want to growl. “We’ll make it back to the warehouse before he wakes up.”
I cleared my throat. “Good thing you already had a place for us to go.”
She turned her head just enough that I caught a flash of lightning reflecting off her iris, then back to Sullivan. “Yeah, good thing.”
Was she even listening to me?
“What’s up?” This wasn’t nerves over the op—she’d been fine while we were waiting for Sullivan. This was something else.
Her hands tightened on Sullivan’s ankle, then let go. She stepped back. “We should have heard from Rhys or Monty by now. Strict rule: we split up; we keep in touch.”
“Maybe the storm is fucking with the signal. Georgia isn’t exactly New York, especially not out here.” I was already rounding the van to check the phone we’d set up for the rest of Mikaela’s team to contact as needed.
Remi passed me with a well-wrapped bundle over his shoulder. “Everything okay?”
“Checking for anything from team two,” I said. As I fiddled with the phone attached to the dash for convenience, I heard Titus return the driver to the back of the van. Next step: adding the controls we needed for remote control of the car, and the small container of shock-sensitive chemicals that would make certain the car ignited when it hit the ground beneath the overpass.
The cell showed no calls or texts. “Nothing here. Not on your phone either, Ti?” I yelled back to the other man.
“Titus.” The man bared his teeth at me as he joined us. His hair was once again back in a bun, keeping the long, wet strands out of his face.
“Is your entire team picky about their names? What about Maris?” I added a hint of wicked to my grin, knowing my eyes were hidden beneath the shadows of my cap. “Does she have a nickname? Sweetie, maybe?” Mikaela’s sister was their soft underbelly if there was one; the woman didn’t have a mean bone in her body that I’d observed—unlike her sister.
Mikaela closed the doors at the back, rounded the side of the van. “Maris might seem sweet, but don’t get her riled. She’ll make you a eunuch in a heartbeat.”
“Just ask Rhys,” Titus added, joining us as we climbed into our seats.
“She made him a eunuch?” I teased.
Titus snorted, opening and closing his fists as if the punches he’d thrown had made them ache. “She’s tried.”
“But she didn’t succeed. Not very effective.”
Mikaela mumbled under her breath, something I couldn’t quite catch. “What was that?”
She turned my way, and I could see the amusement clearly as lightning lit up the sky, revealing her eyes. “She wouldn’t want to permanently damage anything that might be useful later.”
“Oh. Ooooh.” My smirk probably matched Mikaela’s as I got her drift.
Remi was driving the town car, and we let him turn around first, then followed. When we pulled onto the main road, he was just ahead. About a quarter mile from the bridge, he stopped the car in the middle of the road, fiddled with th
e controls we’d added, then faced us. His thumbs-up was clear before he jogged toward the overpass ahead. He would wait to one side, making certain no cars happened to be underneath us with a 5500-pound brick headed their way.
“Ready?” I asked, the question rhetorical.
“Get on with it,” Mikaela said from the back seat.
I pulled the remote controls up on the mini computer we used for missions—state-of-the-art, completely custom, built by me. The car synced quickly, and the others watched as I revved the engine a couple of times experimentally.
“Here we go,” I said. Releasing the brakes on the town car, I hit the gas and steered for the far edge of the overpass ahead. I watched on the computer screen and the others watched through the front window as the car sped toward its fate, the front door swinging wildly where Remi had left it unlatched.
Second rushed by, too few seconds, and then the vehicle clipped the edge of the overpass and sailed off the side in a graceful arc before slamming into the empty highway below. An immediate boom preceded a flash of flames as the car detonated.
Titus drove the van forward, and as we neared the overpass, Mikaela climbed into the back and flipped open the door. Unlatched the driver’s restraints. The man stirred just in time to be rolled onto the bumper, then out of the van. Titus stopped just long enough for Remi to jump in, and Mikaela shut the door behind him.
We’d gone no more than a couple of minutes down the road, headed back to grab the Corolla, when the team phone beeped with an incoming text. My gut knotted for no reason when I saw Monty’s name pop up.
I tapped the phone. A curse escaped, loud in the anxious silence of the van.
“What is it?” Mikaela asked. “What happened?”
I looked at Titus. “We need to hurry.” Unhooking the cell, I passed it back to Mikaela, knowing she would want to see for herself. “There’s a problem with Rhys. They were attacked. Rhys is hurt.”
Chapter Twenty
Nix —
“He’s allergic to what?” Eli asked.
I couldn’t stop pacing the path I’d carved out behind the ragged couch Rhys lay on. My teammate’s lips had returned to their normal color by the time Monty got him back to the warehouse, but I’d seen them before, knew what it looked like when he couldn’t breathe because his throat was swollen shut. I rubbed the heels of my palms hard over my eyes. “He has a severe allergy to ketamine.”
“The shit we use to knock out every target we want to keep alive?” Eli’s wide eyes and high brows told me he realized exactly how dangerous this could get.
“He never goes on an op without an epi,” Monty said. He slouched in a chair next to Rhys’s head, his face nearly as gray as our teammate’s. “We all know how to administer it, as well as the diphenhydramine he carries just in case. It just...” Monty crossed his arms over his chest, rubbing his biceps hard as if he was cold. “It took me longer to get to him than it should have.”
They’d been searching Sullivan’s empty house. It should have been safe—Sullivan didn’t employ guards, just a grade A security system Monty could bypass in his sleep. If I’d thought there was a risk of attack, I never would have sent the two of them in alone.
I’d messed up. And Rhys had almost paid with his life.
Remi joined us as he clicked off his call with Leah. “She agrees, nothing more for us to do as long as he’s breathing normally again.”
“We’ve dealt with this before,” I snapped, not meaning to but unable to keep my emotions out of the words. “We’ve had to. Hospitals aren’t around every corner in the places we’ve worked.”
Remi eyed me a moment, and somehow the calm in his gaze made me feel worse. I’d rather he snap back, yell, get mad. Then I’d have something to focus on other than Rhys’s sleeping form overflowing the too-small couch.
Finally he spoke. “I’m just making certain there’s nothing we could help with. Anything else we can watch for. Leah is a registered nurse. It never hurts to ask.”
We are not the enemy, his tone said, but I needed an enemy. I needed someone to fight, because the man who’d done this to Rhys was long gone.
Focus on something else, Nix.
“You made sure she didn’t say anything to Maris?” My sister would lose her shit if she knew Rhys had been injured and she wasn’t with us.
Remi nodded. “Maris is asleep in the guest room on Abby and Levi’s floor of the mansion.”
I wanted to go get her, bring her here. Know my family was safe and together.
I couldn’t.
They hadn’t left her alone in the basement. I guessed that was something.
“Tell me again what happened, Monty,” I said instead.
Before he could start, Titus entered from the hall under the staircase. “Sullivan is still out,” he said, moving to join us. “That second dose is doing the trick.”
“He’s secure?” I asked.
Titus nodded. “I’ll stay with him tonight; just wanted to hear the story.” He jerked his chin toward Rhys.
“Just in time, bro.” Monty raised a hand for Titus to clasp tight. I waited impatiently for him to continue.
“They were waiting for us in the study.” Monty laced his fingers together and inverted them. A series of pops sounded. His tell—he didn’t want to relive the moments when Rhys’s life had been in his hands, but he knew how important the details were.
“How could they be waiting?” Eli asked. “We’ve got access to the security feeds from Sullivan’s house. No one has been in or out except for household staff.”
Monty frowned. “I don’t know. I only know that when we moved into the study to search, they were already there.”
“How much of the house did you get through first?” I asked.
“We’d been through it all except that room.”
I could tell the fact that their mission had been incomplete was riding Monty, but Rhys’s safety had been more important. Family came before the op, always. Having met the Agozi brothers, I now knew they held the same view.
“Find anything?” Eli asked.
I opened my mouth, ready to tell him to shut it, that he wasn’t running the show—and then our gazes clashed. Eli stared me down as if he knew exactly what I’d been about to say. Exactly what I was thinking and feeling. And he was willing to take it if I needed him to.
I looked away first, hating myself for it but unable to stop.
As if he’d been waiting for Eli and me to settle our battle of wills, Monty continued. “Not a fucking thing.” He leaned forward, planted his elbows on his knees. “I’d almost swear the man doesn’t live there, or at least doesn’t use most of the rooms. That house is like a magazine.”
“He might not use much of it,” Remi pointed out. “He lives alone. He probably prefers certain rooms.”
“And the house is a showcase,” Eli agreed. “I’ve seen photo spreads of parties held there. The upstairs might be where he mostly lives.”
Monty shook his head. “That’s just it—there wasn’t even a speck of toothpaste in the bathroom sink. No books on the bedside table. Nothing. Only the worst kind of OCD could keep a place that spotless. I’d hoped to find more in the study, at least work intel, but...”
We’d find the tie between Sullivan and X one way or another. “We’ll take it up with him tomorrow,” I said, impatience roughening my words. I’d work the man over tonight if I thought it would get me anywhere, but my team needed to be at a hundred percent before we tackled anything else. “Tell me what happened in the study.”
Monty sat back. “We entered the study last, began clearing it immediately. Same routine as in every room. One guy lunged out of a closet as Rhys opened it. Got him with the needle straight off. I ran for them, but another man tackled me from behind.” Monty’s fists tightened at the memory. “I flipped him—”
“Him?” I asked sharply.
I could see him thinking back, weighing his impressions, making certain he was right. “Definitely too big an
d bulky to be women.”
“Did the second guy have a needle too?” Remi asked.
“Lost it when I tossed him.” Monty’s smile wasn’t happy. He opened a flap on his fatigues and retrieved an uncapped hypo wrapped in a tissue. “I grabbed it before we left.” He passed it to Titus, who took it over to the computer table. “We were fighting when the guy with Rhys shouted. I could hear Rhys gasping for breath. I guess it scared them, because they ran out.”
Soldiers who could take my guys by surprise didn’t get scared. The story made no sense.
“I’m not sure where they went out—I was too busy taking care of Rhys. Maybe we caught them on the feeds?”
Eli nodded. “I’ll see if they show up on the external cameras we planted.”
“I’ll watch Rhys for a while longer,” Monty said. His body went boneless as he laid his head back on the chair. “He’ll sleep.”
“I’ll be in with Sullivan,” Titus said.
“I’ll take watch at four,” Remi told him. “Split the night.”
All nice and neat, plugged into shifts, but I noticed Eli said nothing. Those golden eyes watched me, waited. For what? Right now all I wanted was to punch something. Hard. Maybe then the loop playing in my head of Rhys dying would go away. “I’ll shower, then relieve you,” I told Monty. When he went to argue, I gave him my commander look. Stand down. I’ll keep watch.
I needed to.
My clothes were still damp from the rain, adding to the roil of emotions filling me too full. I went upstairs to the room Maris and I shared, and grabbed some clothes out of the duffel I’d used since I was a teen—army green, my dad’s initials on the outside. I was digging in the pocket for underwear when a knock sounded on the door.
“Go away,” I grumbled under my breath. Not as loud as I wanted to, but then, whoever was knocking probably didn’t deserve the words. I rounded the pallet I slept on and jerked the door open.
Scratch that—I definitely should’ve ignored that knock. “Go away, Eli.”
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