In His Sights (Stealth Series Book 2)

by Danica Winters

If only she understood he was simply doing his job, and he had only brought her here to keep her safe. He had really been acting out of what he had believed were his best intentions—though, looking back, part of the reason he had wanted to keep her safe and out of harm’s reach was because he was falling for her.

  And look where those damn feelings had landed them.

  He sat beside her on the bed and ran the cool cloth over her brow. She stirred a bit at the chill, but her eyes remained closed.

  She wasn’t faking it, but she clearly wasn’t in a damned hurry to come back to him.

  There was the buzz of her phone from her pocket.

  It buzzed again.

  He had been behind Zoey giving her the phone and getting her access to work, but he was surprised that people were already trying to get ahold of her. He looked down at his watch. Then again, they were on Eastern Time. Though it was early morning in Montana, it was late morning there. And she probably hadn’t told anyone where she had gone. At least, he hoped she hadn’t.

  His family’s secret popped into his mind. If Mindy had notified someone that she was here, and revealed who she was with, it would put his entire family at risk of being found by the Gray Wolves. If the organization heard even a whisper of where they might be, they would descend upon them.

  It was all his fault.

  If only he could go back in time and turn down this job. If only he could have faced Trish’s loss and the family’s grief instead of running and hiding himself behind the emotional walls of his work, it would have saved them all a great deal of heartache.

  Then again, he would have never met Mindy.

  Even if things weren’t turning out as he had hoped, at least they’d had one wonderful night together. Though they hadn’t completely given themselves to one another, it was still one of those nights that he would hold on to forever. Sometimes the preamble to making love was even more exhilarating than the act itself. If they had gone all the way, and if it was impossibly better than the moments they had shared, he would probably have died from ecstasy.

  Her phone buzzed again, sounding even more insistent.

  Reaching down, and careful not to invade her privacy, he pulled the phone from the pocket of her sweater.

  There, on the screen, was the name Arthur.

  His first thoughts were of the rookie that had taken Daniel down. He laughed at his reaction. Agent Arthur wasn’t actively pursuing this lead. And, if he was, Jarrod’s handlers at the CIA would have told him.

  And he doubted that Agent Arthur was the kind who would go behind his superior’s backs, at least not this early in his career. Something like that, disobeying orders, would get him sent straight back to the civilian world.

  Still, he couldn’t shake his illogical fear.

  What if Mindy had been playing him instead of the other way around? What if she had known about Daniel’s death the entire time and had just been using him so that she could come here and infiltrate his family for the Gray Wolves? What if she was here to kill him and his family?

  What if he had set a Wolf loose in their home?

  He stood up from the bed as he stuffed Mindy’s new phone into his pocket.

  Mindy moaned from the bed and her eyes fluttered open.

  He wasn’t sure what to do. There she was, lying in front of him, her pink lips parted as though she was waiting for his kiss.

  For the first time, he realized that this confusion, this complete loss of bearings, must be exactly what she was feeling, as well. That is, if she wasn’t a spy for the Gray Wolves.

  She moaned again, and this time it carried the soft hoarseness of one who had just made love. The sound pierced the feeble shell he had been trying to build around himself.

  There was no way she could have faked this. She had been taken to her knees by his revelation.

  He couldn’t project his guilt onto her. No. He was the one who had made mistakes.

  He knew he was trying to rationalize, but he couldn’t have told her who he was before or his role in her brother’s death. No. He had done what he had to do. Being covert was as much a part of his job as meetings with dignitaries and the like was a part of hers.

  His anger surprised him. He tried to stanch it, but the more he thought of his justifications, the angrier he became. It wasn’t just anger with her, but rather the entire situation.

  Mindy opened her eyes. He knelt down. “Why don’t you stay here and rest. I’ll come up and check on you in a little bit. In the meantime, I’m going to go and make sure that Anya has breakfast.”

  Mindy moved to argue, but as she sat up, she was taken with what he assumed was another feeling of faintness.

  “Just rest. When you feel better, we can talk,” he said, trying to keep his tone neutral.

  She nodded and laid her head back on his pillow.

  As he closed the door behind him, he couldn’t help feeling thankful that for once a woman in his life hadn’t argued with him.

  He sat down at the top of the stairs, not ready to face his sister. Taking out Mindy’s phone, he opened it up using a password he had noticed her using. Luckily, he got it right on his first try.

  On the home screen were the icons for her email as well as the notification that she had missed a call. He needed to be careful not to leave any tracks of his snooping. If she found out, there was absolutely no way he would ever get back into her good graces. As it was, there was only a slight chance of reconciliation between them.

  Opening up the phone icon, he scrolled through her call log.

  Picking through the numbers, he tried to see if he recognized any, but none stood out. He turned to his own phone and looked up Agent Arthur’s cell. Out of curiosity and a desperate hope he was wrong, he did a search for the number. Nothing came up.

  He felt a bit of relief in finding out that his fears about her double-crossing him were completely unfounded, but there was still something nagging him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  Mindy hadn’t seemed like the type who would play him, at least not intentionally.

  On the heels of that thought was the realization that he was being a hypocrite.

  Even if she was working against him, how could he begrudge her—what if she was only doing her job?

  No. She wasn’t working against him.

  He just needed to make things right between them, and make her understand his actions. Then, perhaps, they could go back to where they once were, lying in each other’s arms and whispering late into the night. She could be his and he could be hers. They could belong to one another forever.

  And maybe that was nothing more than a pipe dream, and he had screwed up the only future he had ever truly hoped for.

  He clicked on her photo album in the cloud, hoping to see a picture of her smiling, anything that could help ease the pain that was filling his heart.

  There were dozens of pictures of her and Anya playing in Central Park, one of them on the boardwalk on the Jersey Shore, and another where she was laughing and Anya’s face was filled with mischief. In every photo, she and Anya looked sublimely happy. It was almost as if the two of them were only truly happy when they were together.

  Which made him wonder... If things did go his way, and they reconciled, would there be any room for him in their little club of two?

  From the top of the stairs, he could make out the sweet trills of Anya’s voice drifting up to him from the kitchen. The sound was broken by the ting of a metal spoon on a cereal bowl and the echoes of his sister’s laugh.

  He could see how easy it was to love a girl like Anya. She was the epitome of innocent sweetness. There were no questions about the little girl’s thoughts or feelings—she just put them out there without fear of consequence or reprimand.

  If adults were the same, life would be easier in so many ways.

  He closed his e
yes and tried to envision a future with Anya and Mindy. He could almost see them now, sitting downstairs with his family eating breakfast. When they were together, really together, it would become his mission to make a full spread—ham, eggs, potatoes, toast, waffles, pancakes, sausage, bacon and even beans for his brothers Chad and Trevor, who could eat everything in sight. Trevor had always loved when they’d spent time in England and had the chance to gorge themselves on the full fry-ups.

  He smiled at the thought of them all together.

  Again, the ache for Trish returned.

  He couldn’t help but wonder if the grief that came with her loss would ever go away.

  Anya laughed, the sound bright and cheerful.

  What would happen to her when she learned of her father’s death? Would she feel the same way he did about Trish? Would his absence from her life be a constant sting, or was Anya still young enough that his loss wouldn’t be as hard to deal with as it would have been if the girl was older?

  The ache in his chest intensified.

  If only he had stopped Agent Arthur from hurting the man. If only he could have seen what was to come.

  If only, if only... He had to stop. He had to take control of the situation. It was his only choice. He couldn’t stand by and hope time would dull the pain and anguish caused by his mistakes. He had to move forward and do everything in his power to make things right.

  Renewed, he stood up and started to walk down the stairs.

  Mindy’s phone rang in his hand once more.

  Again the caller was “Arthur,” and the familiar twinge of angst filled him. He ignored the call and sent it to voice mail.

  He started to close the photo app, planning to cover his tracks, but as he did, the photo album he’d been looking at flipped to another. There, standing at what looked like a company luncheon, complete with a spread of firearm prototypes of all sizes and colors, was Mindy. Standing behind her, and to her left, was none other than Agent Arthur.

  So much for hope, and so much for “if only.” Now he was left with one choice alone: to kill or be killed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The door to Jarrod’s room slammed open, hitting the wall behind it so hard that the door handle stuck in the drywall. “Are you kidding me?” Jarrod said, his voice somewhere between a terrifying yell and a sobering accusation.

  Mindy tried to sit up in bed, but as she moved, her head throbbed. “What? What is it?” As she looked up at him, rage and hurt in his eyes, she was brought back to what had happened between them.

  “You’ve been lying to me,” he said, pain flecking his voice.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, trying to force her body to submit to her will and simply regain her equilibrium. “I don’t know why in the hell you’re pissed off at me, when I’m the one who has every right to be angry here.”

  “I admit that I screwed up.” He took a long breath as though he was trying to control his temper. “I kept the truth of who I was from you, but I did so for both of our benefits. But how dare you judge me when you’re keeping your own secrets from me.”

  She was at a loss. “What are you talking about, Jarrod?”

  He thrust her phone at her. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’ve been working with Agent Arthur?”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. “Agent Arthur?”

  He clicked on the screen, using a password that she hadn’t given him yet he seemed to somehow know. She thought about asking why he thought it was okay to steal her password and invade her privacy, but they were well past that point. Now, as far as she could tell, they were both at a place of all or nothing.

  If she hadn’t fainted, she had no doubt that he would have had her ass on a plane at that very moment.

  “Who is this?” he asked, pulling up a picture of the company’s last summit meeting.

  There was a large group of people in the photo. When the photo had been taken they were in the middle of reviewing next year’s weapon prototypes. They were going to unveil a new line of long-range military-grade rifles.

  Her engineers had put a great deal of time and effort in the design. In fact, it was the line they had intended on manufacturing in Sweden.

  The thought made her stomach clench as she thought of Hans and the Riksdag. And Daniel.

  “Who?” she asked, looking at the many faces of people standing around her in the photo.

  He pointed at a tall and muscular man standing behind her in the picture.

  “That guy?” she said with a chuckle. “Oh, you are being ridiculous if you are worried about him. That’s one of my assistants, Arthur McDuffy.”

  Jarrod made a strange wheezing sound as he dropped her phone onto the bed beside her. “Did Daniel know him?”

  “They might have seen each other, but rarely. Why?”

  Jarrod shook his head, saying nothing as he stared down at his toes.

  “Now, was there a reason you thought it was okay to go through my things?” She shut off the screen on her phone and slid it under her leg. “If you want, I can go find my purse and let you look into that, as well. Or, you could just ask me about whatever it is that you think I’m guilty of.”

  He stared vacantly at the place where she had tucked the phone beneath her leg.

  “I bet this is just your way of taking the pressure off you. Something you learned in the CIA? You know, the old bait and switch thing? Make me look guilty of some nonsense thing in order to make me think that you aren’t the worst kind of man on earth?” As she spoke, anger roiled through her, washing away any remnants of the feebleness she had been feeling. “Well, guess what? You are the one who is in the wrong here. I’ve done nothing.”

  She stared at him waiting for a response. He didn’t move.

  “You asked me to listen to your side of the story, to hear why you did what you did. I get that you didn’t think you had a choice, but you know what, Jarrod? I don’t forgive you. You lied to me. You played Anya and me for fools. And no matter what comes, or what risks are waiting for us, I want to go back home.”

  He jerked. “You can’t.”

  “Why? You want me to stay here?” she rebuked, knowing that she was calling him deeper into the fight. She gave a dry, angry chuckle. “You’ve done nothing but manipulate me. Enough is enough, Jarrod.”

  “I know you aren’t going to listen to me, but I wish you would.” He paused. “I didn’t bring you here to manipulate you. I just wanted to help.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and protecting what little there was left of her heart.

  “You have every right to be angry,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he continued. “How long have you known McDuffy?” He finally looked her in the eye.

  She shrugged. “You aren’t about to change the subject on me.”

  “Just answer me.” He wasn’t angry, just insistent, which made her come to a screeching halt.

  What was he getting at by going after Arthur? And what did it matter?

  “I don’t know.” She thought for a moment. “I guess he’s been working for me for about the last six months.”

  Jarrod turned away from her and slowly paced around the room. “How did he get hired?” Before she could answer, he continued, “Did you run any sort of background check on the man?”

  “That kind of thing is my HR team’s job, but I’m sure they were done.” She paused. “Do you think he had something to do with the nerve agent attack, or something to do with Daniel?”

  He snorted like he knew something that she didn’t. Her anger rose to the surface once again.

  “Look, Jarrod, if we are going to get along...and if you want me to forgive you for lying to me, then you and I are going to have to get something straight. You have to tell me the truth. We have to be honest with one another. Or else, what is
the point? I won’t be able to trust you and you won’t be able to trust me.”

  As it was, even if he was honest with her, she wasn’t sure if she could ever really trust him again. He had broken her heart into a million pieces. Her trust was completely shattered.

  “Let’s just say that I know Arthur.”

  She could have sworn he said something under his breath that she couldn’t quite hear.

  She sighed. He still wasn’t telling her anything. She should have seen him for the interrogation specialist he was. “Arthur formerly worked for my father. He was one of several of his assistants. How do you know him, Jarrod?”

  She could have sworn Jarrod’s face paled.

  “Did he have access to any private information?” he asked.

  “Not my files.” She nibbled at the corner of her cheek. “At least I don’t think so.”

  “And what about your father’s?” he pressed.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was rare that my father even let my brother and me into his office, let alone have any kind of dealings with the day-to-day running of the company.”

  “And yet you and your brother were left with the company after your father’s death?”

  He sounded so judgmental. What was he trying to insinuate?

  “Look, I’ve done the very best I could, given the circumstances of my father’s death. I have worked hard to understand and run the company the way he would have wanted.” She stood up, readying herself for another battle with the man with whom she had previously shared her bed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, taking her hands in his.

  She wanted to pull away, but she yearned to feel his touch once again. When he had been with her on the plane, his touch had reawakened a part of her that she had given up hope on.

  If he truly didn’t have anything to do with her brother’s death, and had been merely a bystander as he claimed, then perhaps there was room in her heart for forgiveness.

  She may have caught him in a lie, but he didn’t have to tell her about his investigation. In divulging the truth to her, he had opened himself up to far-reaching consequences. If the CIA found out that he had acted against their best interest, his job—and maybe even his life—would be in jeopardy.