Plus the Gibbs guy—Colonel Mendez—wore a uniform. Dex had taken her into a different area this morning. Everyone was there, and then the colonel came to talk to them.
They’d boarded a bus and driven to a nearby airfield. A plane sat with engines humming. The name of a cargo company was emblazoned on the side, but it wasn’t a cargo plane. Or not strictly a cargo plane. Equipment and supplies probably took up the luggage area, but the rest of the interior was almost ordinary.
The seats were spacious, but that was because the rows weren’t crammed together like in a commercial plane. It wasn’t a fancy private jet, but it was roomier than a typical carrier. There were still flight attendants who walked up and down the aisles, asking if they would like something to drink or eat.
“You okay?” Dex asked, settling in beside her after talking to some of his guys.
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Why hasn’t Lyon called back yet?”
“I’m not sure. He might be making you sweat.”
“He’s doing a good job of it.” She’d worried there might be more reports of things burning down during the night, but there hadn’t been. So far it was only Archer Industries that had suffered any damage. She’d called her secretary this morning when she’d finally been allowed to do so.
Archer Industries was shut down for the foreseeable future. The lab was destroyed beyond repair. The projects? Ruined, of course. And Marshall Porter?
Unavailable. Lucy had been calling his number, but he hadn’t picked up. He wasn’t in the lab, that much they knew, so Annabelle wasn’t worried he’d been killed. But where was he?
She’d texted him, but so far he hadn’t replied. She couldn’t decide if that was a normal thing or a suspicious thing. Marshall was an extreme introvert, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to disappear for a weekend. Since this was a Saturday, it was possible he’d gone on a trip and had no intention of returning until Monday morning.
But why wouldn’t he answer her texts? She’d never gone without an answer before.
“He’ll call.”
He meant Lyon. The aching in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t go away. “I hope so.”
Dex curled his fingers into hers. “He wants the money, Belle. Don’t forget that. Without you, he doesn’t have it. And without your loved ones, he doesn’t have you.”
She squeezed his fingers in return. She knew he was right. Logically.
But Mr. Lyon didn’t strike her as completely logical. He seemed vindictive and impatient.
“Is he still in Jorwani?”
“Yes.”
Jorwani was an African nation that bordered Kenya on the north and Somalia on the east. It wasn’t a good place to be. Not these days. There had been fighting between the government troops and opposition forces who called the government corrupt. A charismatic man named Zain Okonjo was the opposition leader, and the conflict was escalating.
“Why would anyone want to go there right now?”
“If they’re the kind of person who profits from war, it’s precisely where they’d want to be.”
“You’re saying he’s profiting off the conflict?”
Dex nodded. “Probably. He wanted your drone recharging technology. That’s not the kind of thing you sell to someone for giggles. There’s a need for it, and Lyon intends to deliver.”
“Are drones really a big business in Jorwani? It seems too poor.”
“I imagine Lyon was planning to sell it to the government so they could spy on Okonjo’s movements at the minimum. At the maximum, they’d get an attack drone from somewhere and use it to decimate the opposition. Lyon probably also intended to sell it to everyone else who wanted to buy. That kind of technology takes time to implement. By the time he sold it to a dozen states, he’d have more than made back his money.”
“I wonder how he heard of it in the first place. It’s a top secret project. It’s not like we advertised it in the newspaper.”
He gave her a meaningful look. “There are ways, Belle.”
“You’re saying Mr. Lyon knew where to look? Like Eric took out a secret ad on Craigslist for spies or something?”
“There’s a whole dark web out there, honey. Most people don’t know about it—or don’t want to know. You can buy anything there. Bitcoin is typically the currency of choice.”
She shook her head. “What is that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s virtual currency. Unregulated. It can be used anonymously. No names attached, no locations.”
“But Eric and Mr. Lyon didn’t trade in Bitcoin. Those are actual dollars in the Swiss accounts.”
“Yes, they are.” He shrugged. “No idea, but possibly Eric insisted on money he could move rather than a Bitcoin account. Bitcoin is trading pretty high right now, but nobody knows what could really happen to it. There are no regulations, as I said.”
“Eric and I weren’t precisely close, but I’d have never thought he could do something like this.” She frowned. “His parents died in an accident three years ago, and he inherited the company. I thought it meant something to him.” As much as anything besides his own ego could mean to Eric.
“Is this the kind of thing someone else could have involved him in? What about Porter?”
“But why? Wouldn’t Marshall sell the technology himself if that were the case? Why involve Eric? It’s not like a fund-raiser where he’d need Eric’s ability to talk to people. Especially not if it started out on this dark web you mentioned. He could do all his talking in messages.”
Dex expelled a breath. “Unless Porter didn’t want to negotiate the deal at all. But if he’s the one with the brains, he’d have known how to do it—and he’d have probably traded in Bitcoin and then sold it on the open market. Harder to trace. Besides, if he was involved, why is the money still in Eric’s accounts a month later?”
“Maybe someone else on the project involved him in it. But I don’t know who.” There were other engineers who worked on the testing, but none of them stood out as potential traitors to their nation. Not to mention that until Helios worked as it was supposed to, it wasn’t worth the risk to try to sell it.
Which brought them back to Eric and Mr. Lyon. “If Eric really went to Africa for a safari, it’s entirely possible he bragged to the wrong person about Helios and got himself tangled up in something he couldn’t get out of.”
“He’d have had to have something to sell though. He didn’t go to Africa without that. And then there’s half a billion sitting in Switzerland.”
That number made her belly clench. “Yes, that’s true.” Which put them back to square one.
Her gaze slid over Dex’s profile. After the way he’d rocked her world last night and this morning, she couldn’t stop thinking about how much she wanted to do it again.
And again.
There was no hesitation with Dex. No fear. She wanted everything he could give her and more. When he’d slapped her ass—oh, a bolt of lightning sizzled into her core just thinking of it—she’d only wanted more of the same. Not the slap necessarily, though that would have been fine, but more intensity. More Dex.
All of Dex.
She was hopeless over this man. Always had been. She’d thought she’d grown numb over the years, that her love had subsided into something else. It hadn’t. She still loved him fiercely, craved him fiercely, and wanted all he had to give.
He did not want the same. Anguish gripped her in its talons. She swallowed it down.
“You said you were a sniper. This morning.”
His dark gaze settled on her. “Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
Something passed over his face. Something cool and detached. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t quite know. You sit on rooftops and shoot the enemy, I guess.”
“Yes. Sometimes. But there’s more to it than that. Sometimes a dangerous target has to be eliminated. We get into position and… wait.”
She shivered. He was talking about assassin
ating people. Not just shooting an enemy who also had a gun, but waiting for a designated target who might not be armed. It wasn’t what she’d expected, and yet it made a terrible kind of sense.
“I… Wow. I’d have never guessed. You were so outgoing in school, so happy—”
“I don’t have to be unhappy to do my job. It’s a hard job, but a necessary one. And yeah, I learned stillness and inner reflection after you left me. I had a lot of time to think. I was angry.”
Guilt perched in her soul like a malevolent crow. Sorrow for all she’d lost with him took up residence beside it. Dex wrapped her hand in his, startling her. Her gaze met his. Her heart thumped extra hard at the heat in his look.
“It’s not your fault, Annabelle. I’m responsible for my own emotions and my own choices. The path I went down was the path of my own choosing. I could have chosen another one.”
“Why do we make the choices we make then?” She’d been asking herself for the past two days why she hadn’t told him what was happening five years ago. Why she hadn’t trusted him enough to involve him. Why she’d taken it all on herself. It was like she’d had a martyr complex or something.
“Because it’s who we are,” he said softly.
*
“You get anything on Marshall Porter yet?” Dex asked Richie.
Richie and Kid were sitting at a table with Iceman and Chase “Fiddler” Daniels. Kid was on the computer and the others had grim faces.
Dex had left Annabelle reading and come over to talk to the guys. They still had several hours to go and a lot of intel left to obtain before they could plan how to get the hostages back. He needed to get involved in work. Sitting with Annabelle, talking about the past—well, that wasn’t good for him. Especially not now.
He’d told himself that last night and this morning was it, the end of their reunion. They’d talked, they’d fucked, and there was nothing left for them. Whatever they’d once had was in the past, in spite of what happened to make them split up in the first place.
It was just better this way. Cleaner.
Richie’s gaze was troubled when it met his. “Not much. MIT grad. Honors. He’s from Lexington. He worked in DC for a while, but he went home when his mother got cancer. She died six months ago now. He stayed in Kentucky, working for Archer Industries.”
Dex studied them. No one but Richie would look at him. “So what’s going on? Why does everyone look like they just got bad news?”
Richie cleared his throat. “We can’t find Porter. He was at the lab last night, but he left before it blew. He’s not been seen since. He didn’t go home. We’re waiting on credit card info to track his movements.”
“So he could be on the road somewhere. Or Lyon could have gotten to him if there’s no paper trail.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that all?”
Richie frowned. “You should probably talk to Annabelle.”
Dex felt his brows arrow down. What the fuck? “I’ve been talking to Annabelle. What more do you want me to ask her? Was she fucking Porter?”
A weight sat in his gut at the thought, but hell, maybe she was. Maybe she’d lied about it being two years since she’d had sex. Maybe she’d wanted to see if he’d fall for it.
Deep down, his instincts told him it wasn’t true, that last night had been the first time for her in a long time. His baser mind was busy conjuring all sorts of reasons for him to be wrong. He’d been burned by her and he was wary, no matter what she said about the reasons for it.
“No evidence of that,” Richie said. He cleared his throat. “Has she said anything about Charlotte?”
“She’s said a lot about Charlotte.”
Richie’s gaze strayed over Dex’s shoulder, and he knew the other man was looking over to where Annabelle sat. “Has she told you that Eric Archer isn’t Charlotte’s father?”
Everything inside Dex went still. Like nuclear-winter still. Nothing moved. “What do you mean he isn’t her father?”
“We’ve got, uh, a DNA test here in her records that was initiated by Eric Archer. They’re not related.”
Dex’s temples started a drum solo. Charlotte Archer was four years old. Four. If she wasn’t Eric’s… Holy fuck.
He spun on his heel and stalked over to where Annabelle sat with her book. She looked up, a little bit startled, a little bit confused. And then her expression fell and she surged out of her seat. Too late, he realized she must think something had happened to her child.
“Charlotte,” she gasped as he caught her by the arms and held her tight, cursing himself for scaring her.
“She’s fine,” he managed to get out.
Her wide eyes searched his. “Then what’s wrong?”
“You tell me,” he said as evenly as he could. He yanked his phone from his pocket, found the pictures and hit the one of Charlotte. Red hair, freckles, blue eyes. She looked familiar to him, but he’d thought it was because she reminded him of Annabelle. It was a blow to realize she also reminded him of Katie.
He turned the phone to her, his heart beating harder than it had ever beat in his life. “Who’s the father, Belle? Eric? Or me?”
21
Annabelle’s insides dissolved. Dex’s face showed his emotions. Betrayal. Hurt. Disbelief. Rage.
She didn’t blame him. She went limp, sinking against the seat even though she didn’t sit down.
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
His eyes flashed. “Goddamn.” He shook his head as if to clear it of something horrible. Then he wrapped his hand around hers and dragged her toward the back of the plane. Opening a door, he pushed her inside and slammed it shut. They were inside a small conference room with a table and chairs.
He was studying the picture on his phone. “She has Katie’s expression.”
Annabelle folded her arms over her chest to stop the chills rushing up and down her spine. It didn’t work. “I’ve thought so sometimes. I was never sure.”
“Jesus Christ, Annabelle!” Dex threw his phone onto the table and advanced on her like a bull attacking a red cape. She’d never seen him look so angry.
“I wasn’t sure, Dex. I’m still not sure—but yes, I think she’s yours. I never had her tested—”
“Eric did.”
Her stomach lurched. “What? He never told me.”
Eric had seemed less interested in Charlotte over the past year than he ever had before. He’d pretended to care when she was younger, but lately even the pretense had been gone. She’d been relieved rather than alarmed, even if it was hard to watch Charlotte seeking her daddy’s attention and not getting it.
“That’s all you have to say? He never told you?”
She sank down on one of the chairs and put her elbows on the table, dropping her head in her hands. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“You were on the pill the last time we were together. How…?”
She looked up. His eyes were hot, shining with emotion. But which emotion? Anger? Sadness? Fear? Love?
She didn’t know.
“Antibiotics. They make the pill less effective. I was with you and then I was… with…” She couldn’t say the word rape right now. “Eric. I found out I was pregnant after Eric and I had been married for almost three months. I hadn’t had a period, but I’d thought it was stress—but there were other things that happened, and I took a home pregnancy test. When it was positive…” She shrugged. “Eric had been in my bed nonstop for quite some time at that point.”
Dex seemed to deflate. He sank into a chair and closed his eyes. Then he shook his head and didn’t say anything for a long while.
“I have a daughter. With you.”
Her heart was a wounded thing in her chest. Because Dex was hurting. Because, once more, Eric and her parents had exacted a high price for her cooperation with their agenda. “It would seem so, yes.”
“When were you planning on telling me you had your suspicions? Or were you going to tell me at all?”
“I thought I’d have her tested after we got her back safely.”
He smacked a hand on the table, and she jumped at the violence. His nostrils flared as hot color flooded his face. “You should have told me, Belle. All this goddamn time—you should have told me!”
“Told you what?” she yelled back, the restraints on her emotions falling away. “That you might be a father? That I had suspicions but didn’t know for sure? Did you want to know those things right now, when her life is at stake and she might not ever come back again? How would that have made you feel to think that maybe you were the father of a child who is right now depending on you to bring her home safely?”
She was on her feet, leaning across the table, her hands flat on the surface. Fury swam across her vision. Her heart beat a staccato rhythm. She wanted to scream until her throat was raw.
Dex’s eyes widened. He rose in one smooth motion and wrapped strong hands around her forearms. Gently, he pushed her down until she was sitting. He dropped into the chair across from her, his hands still on her arms.
“Breathe,” he commanded.
She dragged in a breath and then another and another, willing her reckless heart to calm down. She needed to focus. Calm dripped into her veins, taking its sweet time. Fury and fear swirled into a toxic stew in her belly until she thought she might be sick with it.
Dex must have thought she was gaining control because he let her go and sat back. She pushed a shaky hand through her hair.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded but didn’t look at him.
“So now we both know something we didn’t know before. I’m Charlotte’s father. Care to tell me when you first thought it was a possibility?”
Her voice was like razor blades in her throat. “I hoped so from the beginning, but it didn’t seem very likely. I think I started to suspect around her first birthday. She didn’t have any of Eric’s features—but then his mother produced a baby picture of him and there seemed to be similarities. So I dropped the idea.”
“Eric must have suspected something. He had her tested.”
HOT Addiction: A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 10 Page 14
