He could look at a situation, assess, analyze, and make a decision before most people formulated the question. Knowing how to act and being able to trust that those actions were right was almost instinctive. It was probably his biggest strength.
But after what had happened with the kid in Russia and now Annie . . .
His gut seemed to be letting him down.
He needed to get back to what he was good at. Solving problems and getting the job done. In this case, clearing Annie’s name and making sure she was safe before he disappeared again.
With that in mind, he left the café and started back to the guest house, making a call along the way to the LC to pass on what information he’d gathered about OPF. Maybe Kate could do something with it.
He’d told Annie he would meet her for lunch on the beach, so he was surprised when she came bursting into the room not long after he’d returned to the guest house.
One look at her face, and he knew something was wrong. She was as white as a sheet.
He felt that strange thud in his chest and didn’t hesitate to draw her against him when she raced into his arms.
The frantic beat of her heart seemed to echo his own.
He had to stop this shit. The man known for his cool under pressure went to fucking pieces whenever she jumped.
He drew her back, holding her away from him, where presumably she wouldn’t do as much harm. “What’s wrong?”
“There were two men at the beach—”
Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever lost it before, but that had done it. He went ballistic. Out of control with rage. “If those two assholes touched you, I’ll kill them.”
Something in his voice seemed to clear some of her panic. She looked at him in surprise. “What? Oh, you mean those guys from yesterday?” She shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about them. This was two different guys. They were walking up and down the beach, talking to people, showing them something. It looked like a flyer. I’d just come back from the bathroom when I noticed them. I don’t know why I didn’t return to my things, but there was something about them. . . . They didn’t look like they were from around here.”
Dean had calmed down enough to ask, “Why?”
“They were a little too polished. I don’t know the right word. . . . Slick, maybe? The fancy-European-designer-suit kind of look. But tough guys. It was just wrong.”
“What was the flyer?”
“I didn’t stick around to find out. But it has to be my picture.”
“You think they were police?”
She shook her head. “No. Don’t you see? I think it’s Jean Paul’s men, and they are looking for us.”
He tried to calm her down. “Jean Paul isn’t looking for us. He’s too busy covering his ass. Anyway, he couldn’t have mobilized that kind of manpower in a couple days to check every island. There are hundreds of places we could have gone; there is no reason to think he would have gotten that lucky to pick this one so fast. He couldn’t have followed us. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
He didn’t believe in coincidences, but it seemed a stretch that Jean Paul would try to track her down with that kind of intensity. He had to know his story wouldn’t hold up. He should be more concerned with getting the hell out of there.
Dean supposed it could be the police or MI6 if they’d given any credence to his terrorism report. But again, mobilizing that kind of manpower that quickly didn’t seem likely.
“Wait here,” he said, setting her aside. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”
“No.” She caught his arm, her slender fingers pressing like a vise. “You can’t go down there. What if they see you? What if something happens to you?”
“I’ll be careful.” He wanted to dismiss her concerns out of hand, but he couldn’t. If she was right, this was bigger than he’d thought.
He pulled the phone from his pocket and handed it to her. “You hang on to this. If I’m not back in an hour, hit nine. It’s speed dial. The man who answers will know what to do.”
Dean understood the significance of what he was doing. He was handing her his secret. Maybe not in so many words, but if she used that phone she was a part of this.
“Who’s on the other end?”
“Someone you can trust.”
Someone he trusted, he realized. To put Annie’s well-being in Taylor’s hands, he must. So why hadn’t he trusted him in Russia? Good fucking question.
Dean retrieved the gun he’d taken from Jean Paul and stuck it in the back of his jeans.
He could tell she didn’t like seeing that, but she didn’t say anything. Worry and anxiousness clouded every one of her delicate features.
“What should I do?”
“Sit tight” obviously wasn’t going to cut it. She’d go crazy staring out the window, waiting for him to return.
“Change in case we have to get out of here.” She was still wearing her suit and shorts from the beach. “Get our things together, and see if you can get Mrs. Collins to make us a couple of sandwiches.”
She nodded, obviously relieved to have something to do.
He knew too well the trouble you could get into when you were idle. Like getting messed up in an ecoterrorist plot/murder investigation.
Dean grabbed a few more things and went to the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
“You better be.”
He grinned at her fierce expression and pulled her into his arms again for long enough to press an equally fierce kiss on her mouth until it was yielding and soft again.
“Remember, Annie. One hour.”
• • •
It took him half that. The guest house was only a couple of blocks from town. The beach where Annie had seen the men was a short distance beyond, but Dean didn’t make it that far. He’d just turned onto the main drag when he saw the two men walking out of the post office and headed toward Patsy’s supermarket.
One look at them, and Dean knew Annie’s instincts had been dead-on. He could recognize professionals when he saw them. He had no doubt that these guys were hired killers.
His blood turned to ice at the thought of the danger Annie could have been in.
What the fuck was going on here?
He ducked into the post office, happy to see a young kid behind the desk. He looked fresh out of high school—or whatever the Scottish equivalent was.
Dean put on his best beach bum look and looked anxiously over his shoulder. “Who were those two?”
The kid responded to the “sheesh” tone. “They said private investigators. Handed me some kind of badge, but I didn’t look at it too closely.”
“What did they want?”
“Said they were looking for a woman who may have been kidnapped by her boyfriend.”
Fuck.
“But they were lying,” the kid said.
“How do you know?”
“It was the same picture of the woman in the paper yesterday for that murder up in Lewis.”
The kid was obviously pleased with his detective work.
“Really? You must have a good memory.”
The kid blushed. With his cropped strawberry blond hair and transparent complexion, that basically meant he turned beet red.
“It wasn’t hard,” the kid said. “She’s hot. Hard to believe she’d be involved in something like what they are saying.”
Dean nodded, not having to feign understanding. “I bet there’s more to it.”
“Was there something you wanted?” the kid asked, finally remembering his job.
“Yeah, a stamp for a postcard. But I just remembered I forgot my wallet back at the hotel. I’ll be back.”
Dean had all the information he needed, and he didn’t want to waste any more time. If those guys had gone into the market to talk to Patsy, there was a good chance she’d recognize
the picture. It wouldn’t take them long to track them down to the guest house from there.
He wanted nothing more than to go after the bastards and put them out of their misery, but protecting Annie came first. He didn’t know if there were others involved, and he wanted to get her the hell out of here.
None of this made any sense. He’d expected the police to be looking for them, but why was Jean Paul? Was it a loose end to cover up the murders or something else? Whatever it was, Jean Paul obviously meant business. Dean had no doubt those guys had been sent to kill her.
He felt a burst of rage again but forced himself to focus. Annie. He had to get her somewhere safe.
Twenty-six
Kate looked at the screen of the vibrating phone on her desk and felt her heart drop into a dark void of dread and nearly forgotten pain. “Out of area.”
Not again, damn him. He’d promised to leave her alone if she did as he asked. She’d done her part. But since when had Colt Wesson ever kept a promise?
“I promise to love, honor, and cherish you, till death us do part . . .”
An icy wall slammed down hard in her head. She wouldn’t go there. Never again. Whatever love she’d once had for her ex-husband was long gone. That had been easy to forget. What had lingered was the anger and bitterness. She’d buried them beneath layers of time and perspective, and by building a new life for herself, but his sudden appearance in her life again after so many years had exposed some cracks.
She was tempted to ignore the call. But her therapist had told her she would have to face her past at some point, and Kate knew he was right. Or partially right. What he’d actually said was “forgiveness,” but that had about a snowball’s chance in hell. Kate wasn’t that much of a saint. But neither was she a coward, and she wouldn’t let him make her run away.
He was the one who’d done that.
Stay frosty. Wasn’t that what he used to say in the Teams? She would follow his advice. “Hello.” Her voice sounded appropriately sharp and brittle.
“Kate? It’s me.”
Her heart, her breath, everything inside her turned to ice. It was as if she’d just walked over a grave. Literally. The voice belonged to a ghost.
Was this someone’s idea of a joke?
“Who is this?” she demanded angrily.
“You know who it is.”
She sank back in her chair, nearly dropping the phone. It was Scott. She knew his voice too well. It had been a ray of light through the darkest days of her life.
Tears gathered around her eyes. Her throat went hot, her voice dry. He was alive! Happiness burst through her. “My God, where are you? They told me you were dead.”
“Is anyone there with you?”
He sounded so normal, when she felt as if she’d just come out of a dark fog. She shook her head, and then realizing how stupid that was said, “No. I’m in my office at home.”
“Is the ambassador there?”
“He left for work. God, Scott, what is going on?”
“It’s better if you don’t use names.”
Kate didn’t question him. Scott wasn’t paranoid, and whatever this was about, it had to be serious. “All right.”
“I need your help.”
“Of course.”
She could hear the faint sound of amusement on the other side. “Don’t you want to know what I’m getting you into before you say yes?”
“It won’t make a difference.”
There was a long pause. “You always were too good for him.”
She didn’t need to ask whom he meant. Once she would have argued with him, but she just let it go. He was right. “Tell me what you need.”
“Tex is messed up in a murder investigation in Scotland—the Isle of Lewis to be specific. I need you to make it go away.”
Kate was so happy to hear that Dean was alive as well that it took her a moment to catch up with everything Scott was saying. He filled her in a little more on the details. Dean had apparently come to the rescue of a woman who unknowingly had become involved with OPF—an organization she was very familiar with—and they both had ended up being framed for murder when one of the terrorists killed the other two.
“That sounds like him,” Kate said.
“Not following orders?”
Kate laughed. “He’s still giving you a hard time, huh? No, I meant Superman always coming to the rescue and not being able to look the other way. It should sound familiar.”
There was a long pause while they both remembered how he’d come to her rescue—and what it had cost them both.
“He’s a pain in the ass,” Scott said gruffly, “but see what you can find out.”
Scott passed on the information about the woman’s credit card presumably being used to purchase the UNDEX—underwater explosive—materials, and what Dean had found out about OPF and their targets.
“He thinks there’s more to it?” she asked.
“He isn’t sure. But I agree—it seems like overkill.”
She agreed. “I’ll see what I can find out and point the police in the right direction.” It would be easy enough to tell them the CIA had been watching OPF—which they had—and assure them that “Dan” and Annie weren’t involved. “What else?”
Scott hesitated. “I’ve already put you in enough danger as it is.”
She could hear the worry in his voice. He was trying to protect her. But she wasn’t going to let him do that. Whatever had forced him into hiding, he needed her help. She would finally have the chance to pay him back for all he’d done for her. “Then tell me what happened out there so I know what I’m up against.”
He sighed. “You don’t fight fair, do you?”
She’d learned from the best.
“How much do you know?”
“Not much,” she said. “Only what my ex told me, and what my godfather was able to fill in.”
She could hear the shock through the handset. “You talked to him?”
She told him about Colt’s surprise visit. “He said the platoon had been sent on a mission and was KIA, but that he wanted to go to Russia to make sure. He asked me to put him in touch with my godfather.”
She’d been devastated when Colt told her Scott was presumed dead but had tried not to show it. Being careful of Colt’s feelings? She was assuming he had them.
Scott swore. “That is all we fucking need. It’s bad enough with the reporter and her damned ‘Lost Platoon’ articles. You have to stop him. If he finds anything or figures anything out, he could put us all in danger.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
He filled her in on what he knew. The lost communications. The warning he’d received. The missile that had taken out over half the platoon. How the rest of them had barely escaped. How he’d ordered the survivors to scatter and go dark until he could find out what had happened. And about the death of the woman who’d warned him. Kate could tell there was more there, but she didn’t press. He also told her what he’d been able to dig up so far, and his suspicions on where the leak had come from.
When he was done, Kate knew he was right to be worried. The implications were huge. Whoever had set them up would have a vested interest in making sure the truth stayed buried in Russia.
“You need to call him off, Kate.”
“Are you sure?” She paused, knowing how this could go over. “Maybe he could help?”
Colt had no allegiance to anyone and access to resources she didn’t even want to know about.
“His hatred of me outweighs everything else. Three years ago, he told me he’d kill me if he ever had the chance. I believed him.”
Kate wanted to put her head in her hands and weep. Not just for the lost friendship between the two men, but because she knew Colt had meant it. “God, I’m s
o sorry.”
His voice softened. “I’m not. But I need you to do this for me.”
“I’ll try.” She had no idea how to get Colt off the trail, but she’d think of something.
Twenty-seven
Annie was relieved to see him, but Dan’s grim expression told her that she hadn’t overreacted to the two men on the beach.
“We need to get out of here,” he said.
She didn’t waste time questioning him. They gathered their belongings, left money in the room to cover the cost of lodging, and slipped out the back door that led to the car park.
He moved between the cars as if looking for something. He must have found it, because he stopped in front of a compact silver car, which seemed to be the only car size they did on the islands. It was odd not to see SUVs around. The high cost of “petrol” apparently discouraged gas guzzling. When he opened the driver’s-side door on the right, she realized he’d been looking for an unlocked car.
He reached across the seat to open the passenger door, but stopped her before she could climb in. “You need to get in the backseat and lie down. I don’t want anyone to see you.”
It was tiny back there, but she didn’t argue.
He popped the plastic steering wheel casing off and an impressively few minutes later the car came to a rumbling start.
They hadn’t taught him that in the navy. “Grand theft auto on your résumé?” she said dryly.
She hadn’t really been serious, but he was. “Fortunately for me juvenile records are sealed.”
“You aren’t a juvenile now.”
He grinned. “I’m just borrowing it. I don’t want to take the chance of those guys seeing us on foot.”
He started to pull out of the stall. A few turns later and Annie guessed they were on the main road. “Where are we going?”
She could see the flash of white of his teeth when he smiled. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think you need to worry about keeping the excitement level up.”
He laughed and shot her a glance. “You’re funny.”
Going Dark Page 25
