Lethal Consequences (The Aegis Series Book 2)

by Elisabeth Naughton

  “Have you heard from Miller?” she asked, working for calm when sometimes she just wanted to smack Jake upside the head and say, “Seriously?”

  Jake flipped through pages in her daily report, not bothering to look at her. Another MO for Jake. It was all business to him. Even her. “Was I supposed to?”

  “No.” A tiny part of her felt stupid for being so worried. But Jake paid her well because she stayed on top of all parts of an op, even when it was over, and she’d learned long ago not to discount a feeling about any one of “her” guys. “He’s not responding to my messages or phone calls.”

  Jake turned to the back of her report. “He’s done with us, Marley. By now he’s probably sleeping. Or maybe he hooked up with a woman to celebrate.” His dark eyes flicked to hers. “Just because he went offline doesn’t mean anything.”

  Marley’s heart did that stupid little flutter thing it’d been doing the past few months whenever Jake looked right at her, which only ticked her off more. She was not interested in Jake Ryder. He was too controlling and way too domineering and, even on a good day, aggravating as hell. What she needed was an agreeable and pleasant man in her life, one she could unwind with after a long-ass day, like today. Not someone she wanted to slap upside the head every fifteen minutes.

  “Normally, an operative not responding to my messages after completing an op wouldn’t concern me, but this is Miller. He is in no way normal by any definition.” And though Jake might have his head stuck in the sand where his guys’ personal lives were concerned, Marley didn’t. The only woman Landon Miller was interested in was thousands of miles away, probably kicked back on the couch in her small ranch-style house, watching reruns of Scandal, which was exactly where Marley wanted to be.

  Jake lowered the report, tipped his head, and narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”

  What was she saying? “Nothing. Yet,” she added. “But if he doesn’t make that flight in the morning, I’m going to have plenty to say.”

  Jake frowned and headed for his open office door. “I’m sure you will. Miller’s fine. Go home and forget about work for a few hours. The world isn’t going to fall apart without you.”

  Marley tapped her toe against the floor as she watched Jake go, more irritated by his blasé attitude than she liked. No, Ryder’s world might not fall apart if she ignored this feeling, but Landon Miller’s was another matter entirely.

  The cold slap of water against his face jerked Landon awake.

  He gasped, shook his head, and tried to move, only to realize he was hanging by his arms. A dull throb echoed through his skull, but it didn’t even begin to compare to the ache spreading through his shoulders and limbs as he blinked several times against the blinding light.

  “It’s nice to see you’re finally awake,” a heavily accented male voice said somewhere to his right. “I was beginning to think my associates gave you too much happy juice.”

  Landon scanned the room through hazy vision. The edges were dark. No windows. No natural light. The only illumination came from a naked bulb hanging from the center of the room over a metal table and single chair. Ductwork ran along the ceiling, and one look up confirmed his hands were cuffed to a chain slung over a four-inch pipe, his feet dangling a foot from the floor. They had to be in a basement or warehouse of some kind, but since they’d drugged him, he didn’t know where. And common sense told him odds were good they weren’t still in Barcelona.

  Two shadowy figures stood near a door on the far end of the long rectangular room, but he couldn’t see their faces. Based on their sizes and shapes, though, they were both men. Another quick scan of the room told him Olivia wasn’t anywhere close.

  His pulse ticked up, and all kinds of horrendous thoughts about where she was and what was being done to her flashed through his head, but he pushed them aside, zeroed in on his training, and let it guide him.

  The man who’d spoken circled around his front. “You have nothing to say to that? Not surprising, considering your job description.” He stopped in front of Landon, his face cast in shadows. “Ask me,” he added in a low voice. “I know you want to.”

  The voice was unfamiliar, and since Landon’s vision was still murky, he couldn’t see well enough to focus on a face. But his mind flipped back to that tattoo he’d seen on Chantal’s shoulder, and he knew these weren’t people to fuck with. “If this is about the sheikh, he’s probably halfway back to the Middle East by now.”

  A slow smile spread across the man’s face, the whites of his teeth flashing in the dim light. “No, this isn’t about the sheikh. We work for someone with a little more power. And you have something we want.”

  If he had information they needed, it meant Olivia was still alive. They wouldn’t kill her if they wanted him to cooperate. But they would use her. Quickly if they had to.

  His stomach tightened. He glanced around the room again, narrowed his eyes to try to see more clearly. The two pricks by the door were definitely the ones who’d grabbed her from the street. And the victorious smirks across both their faces told him they knew what he was thinking.

  His gaze swung back to the man in front of him. “What do you want?”

  “Information.” The leader stepped back toward the table. Light from the naked bulb illuminated his shaved head as he looked down and flipped a file folder open on the table. “Seventeen months ago, you were given an assignment by the DIA. You failed to complete that assignment even though you claimed otherwise when debriefed.” He pinned Landon with hard, black eyes. “Does any of this ring a bell, Mr. Miller?”

  An ominous feeling rolled through Landon’s stomach. And flashes of that night in Crete echoed in his head.

  “I’m guessing it does.” The man lifted a photo from the file and crossed the floor, stopping in front of Landon once more. A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, and he held the photo up so Landon could see it, passing the light over the surface. “But if it doesn’t, something tells me this will.”

  The photo was of a teenage girl. A girl with long, dark hair, smiling eyes, and a wide grin across her youthful face. She was sitting on the end of a yacht, blue-green water sparkling behind her, and at her side, with his arm slung over her shoulder, was a man. A man Landon would never forget.

  Every muscle in Landon’s body grew taut and rigid. Not just because he recognized the faces, but because in a flash he knew exactly what this was about. And what these terrorist thugs truly wanted.

  “She’s dead,” Landon said.

  A dark, disturbing chuckle echoed from the leader’s throat. “I’m not interested in what you told your superiors. I’m interested in the truth.” All humor faded from his voice. “We know what you did to her family. Just as we know she’s still alive. If you tell us where she is, we’ll make this as painless as possible. For you and your unexpected friend.”

  Olivia. They were talking about Olivia. Landon’s heart rate shot up. “She’s not my friend. She’s just some chick I picked up in the bar. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “No, the chick you picked up in the bar worked for us. And Chantal told us all about this ‘friend’ you supposedly don’t know who showed up at your door. Lucky for us, really. Torture isn’t always an effective means of extracting information from those in your line of work. Chantal could have done it, of course, but this is going to be much cleaner.” He leaned close. “Focus, Mr. Miller. We don’t want to have to use the blonde, but we will if you leave us no other choice.”

  Landon’s hands curled around the chains above. “If you hurt her—”

  “Yes, I know. You’ll snap my neck as you threatened to do to my associates.” He waved the picture in front of Landon’s face. “Where is she?”

  Thoughts swirled out of control. He couldn’t tell them where Dani was hiding. He couldn’t give her up. He owed her too much.

  He also couldn’t let them know that, though. And
he couldn’t give them any reason to use Olivia. Landon’s spinning mind caught on a safe house one of his buddies at Aegis had mentioned a time or two.

  “Sydney. Australia. She’s got family there.”

  “Where?” the man asked.

  Landon hesitated. “In Matraville.”

  “An address,” the man prodded.

  Landon clenched his jaw. “243 Barwin Crescent.”

  The leader turned to the others behind him, then faced Landon once more. “We’ll see about that. You understand if we’re a little skeptical. We just need to make sure you’ve given us exactly what we need. Gentlemen?”

  Instead of leaving to check the info Landon had just given them, the two thugs moved forward, one with a length of chain in his hand, the other with a bat.

  Oh shit. Landon’s hands tightened around the restraints above, and every muscle in his body tensed.

  If he’d thought he was fucked before, now he was absolutely sure. This was about to get seriously ugly.

  Olivia paced the small dark room, desperate for anything to keep her limbs loose and her mind from seizing up.

  A high window on the opposite wall let in a smattering of moonlight, but she couldn’t pull herself up far enough to see what it looked out at. The room was barren—not even a mattress or a chair in the cold square space, and no sound echoed from beyond the heavy steel door. She didn’t know where she was, how long she’d been here, or what had happened to Landon. In the few hours she’d been awake, no one had come for her, no one had demanded anything from her. It was almost as if she didn’t exist.

  That scared her more than anything. Panic pushed on her chest again, and that familiar feeling of the walls closing in consumed her, choking the air in her lungs.

  Breathe. Stay focused. You can get through this.

  All those stupid calming techniques her counselor had taught her came rushing back, but instead of listening, she wanted to scream. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. She wasn’t supposed to be taken a second time. There was no way someone could have this much bad luck and be kidnapped twice in one lifetime.

  Metal groaned just as she was about to seriously lose it, and she jerked toward the sound, a sharp shot of fear shoving aside her useless pity party, grounding her back in the moment.

  Light flooded the room, and two figures stood silhouetted in the open door. One was tall and stocky, the other hunched over, as if being supported by the first.

  Olivia dropped back against the wall, the cool cement pressing into her spine and the palms of her hands. Her pulse shot up, and every muscle in her body went rigid.

  The tall figure dragged the second into the room, then dumped him on the ground. A groan echoed from the floor, and then the man disappeared into the hallway again without a word, slamming the door behind him with a deafening smack.

  Olivia stood stone still for several seconds. The man on the ground feet from her groaned again and tried to move, and in a flash she realized she knew that sound.

  “L-Landon?”

  He rolled to his side, trying to get up. But even through the dim light Olivia could tell he was in pain. “Yeah,” he managed. “It’s me.”

  “Oh my God.” Relief was swift and so all-consuming. She moved without even thinking. Dropping to her knees at his side, she placed her hands on his shoulders, trying to help him sit upright. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” He tried to scoot back, but winced and wrapped an arm around his ribs as if they hurt. As carefully as she could, Olivia helped him move so he could lean against the wall.

  He wasn’t fine. She could see that clearly in the moonlight cascading down from the window above, highlighting his split lip, the swelling around his right eye, and a track of blood smeared across his face she definitely hadn’t been responsible for.

  Sickness threatened, but she pushed it down, whipped off her sweater, and then balled it up and pressed it against his bleeding lip. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” His hand closed over hers, holding the sweater against his lip, halting her movement. “Olivia.” Even in the dim light, the intensity of his gaze cut into hers. “Did they . . . ? Are you . . . ?” He swallowed hard. “Did anyone—”

  She knew what he was going to ask, and she didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to think that could even be a possibility. “No. I’m okay. I’m fine. No one’s said a word to me. They brought me to this room and then left me. You’re the first person I’ve seen in hours.”

  “Thank God,” he whispered. His eyes fell closed, and he relaxed back into the wall, his hand dropping from hers to rest against the dingy floor.

  That didn’t sound all too reassuring. As if he expected they would have done something to her by now. Swallowing the bile sliding up her throat, Olivia went back to wiping the blood from his wound and tried to steady her vibrating nerves. “Who are these people and what do they want?”

  “Information.”

  That didn’t tell her a lot. “About what? I don’t know anything.”

  “Not from you. From me.”

  His eyes were open again, and she could feel his gaze staring into her, but she didn’t want to look. Couldn’t because she didn’t trust her emotions right now.

  She didn’t want to feel. She needed to think. To plan. To figure out what to do next.

  “Livy,” he said softly, “about the woman in my hotel room—”

  Oh no, she wasn’t going there. Not now, not ever. Keeping her eyes on his lip and jaw, she said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “We need to. She—”

  Needed to? No way in this lifetime or the next. He needed to shut up about that woman before she lost what was left of her sanity.

  Dropping her hand from his face, she leaned back on her heels, putting space between them. “What kind of information?”

  He sighed, and she could tell from the sound that he was frustrated with her. So what? She was frustrated with him too. And ticked and hurt and so mad she could barely see straight. But some tiny part of her brain was keeping her from lashing out because he might be her only way out of this nightmare.

  “About an op,” he said. “An old one. Nothing you were ever a part of.”

  So it didn’t have anything to do with her abduction three months ago, and that meant it had nothing to do with her or her sister, Eve. It also meant if they were after Landon for some kind of information, she’d been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again.

  Yeah, her luck really was that bad.

  She brushed the back of her hand against her sweaty forehead and pushed that depressing thought aside. “Why you? Why didn’t they come after someone else from Aegis?”

  “Because I didn’t work for Aegis when it happened.”

  “When you were with the Marines?”

  “No.”

  “When then?”

  He didn’t answer, and she could tell from the hesitation that there was something he didn’t want to say. Her gaze finally flicked to his, and that’s when she saw it. A look of guilt that chilled her to her core. Way deeper than the guilty look he’d flashed in that hotel when that slut had walked out of his bedroom.

  An ominous feeling slid through her veins, and a tiny voice in the back of her head screamed, Don’t ask! But she had to. Because she wanted to live. And if he had answers that could keep her alive, she needed to hear them. “I think I deserve the truth, Landon. You dragged me into this whether you wanted to or not. You owe me an explanation.”

  He sighed again, but this time his eyes fell closed and he leaned his head back against the cement wall. “They want information about a job I did for the DIA.”

  “The who?”

  “The Defense Intelligence Agency. It’s like the military’s version of the intelligence game.”

  Olivia’s brain spun, trying to make
a connection, but the wheels couldn’t totally catch. In all the months they’d been chatting via text and phone calls, he’d never once mentioned the DIA. He’d told her he’d been in the Marines, and she knew he now worked for Aegis. But he’d said nothing about the government or the DIA or anything in between. What else didn’t she know about him? What else was he hiding?

  A lot. Look at that chick in his room. And all this.

  That control she’d been fighting to hold on to threatened to wrench itself out of her grasp. Anger and humiliation burned into a hard, hot knot in her stomach. “Military intelligence?” She crossed her arms over her chest and pushed to her feet. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  “Yeah,” he huffed, still not looking at her. “You could say that.”

  “So tell them what they want.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  Not that easy? Baloney. It was that easy. He just didn’t want to do it.

  “I’m not going through this again,” she tossed back. “I’m not giving up my life for this. Tell them whatever they want to know and get this . . . damn thing . . . over with.”

  Her voice was rising, and she was swearing—something she didn’t like to do. She could hear the panic lifting an octave. Her skin grew warm everywhere, and claustrophobia stole her breath, making it hard to get air. She backed up until her spine hit the wall.

  “Olivia. Breathe.”

  “Fuck . . . you . . .” she managed between deep breaths.

  Somehow, amidst all his pain, he was there, at her front, wrapping his arms around her, holding her close, trapping her between his warm, muscular body and the wall. Heat infused her skin, seeped into her muscles. And though she knew it made zero sense, being enclosed in his arms abated the claustrophobia, though it should have done the opposite.

  “I’m here,” he whispered. “You’re okay. But I need you to listen.”