“It’s worth a shot,” said Mira.
Adam stepped around to face her. “I won’t let you put yourself within his grasp again.”
“It’s the only way. We need to find his labs. The trigger phrases he used to control his subjects are still out there. If someone were to get his hands on them . . .”
Payton’s fatigue seemed to vanish in a flash. Cunning brilliance brightened his eyes, and Mira swore she could see the pieces of some puzzle click into place inside his mind. She had no idea what it was he seemed to have figured out, but he was pleased.
His voice came through, calm and cool. “Adam, if you’re so worried about Mira’s safety, you can go with her.”
“If I see that man again, I’m going to want to kill him,” said Adam.
“You won’t be allowed to go anywhere near him armed.”
“I don’t need a gun to kill. You know that.” Adam tilted his head, staring at Payton. “Maybe that’s what you want.”
“If I wanted Sage dead, he’d be that way.”
As much as she hated her father, she didn’t like to picture him dead. All this talk of killing was making her stomach turn. She needed to move forward and figure out what to do with the information she now had.
“Why did you lie to me?” asked Mira. “Why not just tell me he was still alive?”
“Because I wanted your nightmare to be over. I’ve spent years trying to set things right, trying to undo some of the damage I’ve caused. I thought that it would be easiest for you if you thought he was dead.”
“Did you ever stop to think how it would feel to know you lied to me?” she asked. “I trusted you. You were the closest thing to a real father I’ve ever had. Your betrayal of my trust hurts far more than the bullet my own father put in me.”
As she said the words, the truth in them broke free. Payton had hurt her. Badly. She’d always seen him as an ally, and now he was just one more man willing to use her to get what he wanted.
The only solace she could find was that they both wanted the same thing: the location of the labs where her father hid his research and any information they could find to help those he’d damaged.
“I’m going to see him,” she told Payton. “You have twenty-four hours to make it happen, or I find my own way.”
He nodded slowly. “I understand. You’ll have your meeting.”
“I will be there as well,” said Adam. “She’s not going anywhere alone with either you or Sage.”
Payton’s face was stoic, but his posture seemed to relax. Mira couldn’t help but think that she’d somehow just given him exactly what he wanted.
* * *
Adam trailed behind Mira, unsure what to do. It was clear to him that she was upset, emotional, and shaken, but those weren’t the kinds of problems he knew how to solve.
He followed her to her office, slipping in behind her through the door without an invitation.
She stopped, turned, and looked up at him. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, I mean what do you want?”
To comfort her, but he didn’t dare say that. “You just found out your father is alive. I thought you might want to talk about it.”
She closed her eyes, and for a brief second, he thought she might actually accept his offer to help. Instead, she straightened her spine and squared her shoulders. “Talking isn’t going to change anything. All I need to concentrate on now is being strong enough to get through seeing him again.”
“Payton wanted the meeting,” he said, feeling obligated to share his conclusion.
“I thought so, too. But why?”
Adam took her question as enough of an invitation to invade her private office space. It wasn’t the warm welcome he would have liked, but it was as close as a man like him was going to get.
He slipped past her and took a seat in the guest chair at her desk. “My guess is that Payton thinks your father might tell you something he wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“I haven’t taken any interrogation training yet. I have no idea where to even begin prying information out of him.”
“You don’t need to know a thing. If Payton is right and Sage will give you information, then he’ll do it because you’re his daughter, not because you’re skilled with a set of thumbscrews.”
She eased into her chair as if she were made of glass and afraid she’d shatter.
Adam’s fingers ached to reach out for her, but he kept them curled tightly around the arms of the chair.
“I just don’t know anymore, Adam. I keep thinking I finally have a grip on my life, and then everything spins upside down and I’m left reeling.” Her gaze met his, and he swore he could sense how hard she fought back her tears. “My father is alive. How could I not have known that? How could I not have suspected?”
“Payton is a skilled liar. There’s no shame in being fooled.”
“The way you fooled me? Am I really just that gullible?”
“You know how to trust. It’s a rare and beautiful thing. You shouldn’t let me, Payton, your father, or anyone else steal that from you.”
She rubbed her eyes as if a headache was forming. All Adam could think about was where and how he could touch her to ease her suffering.
“Does your head hurt?” he asked.
“A little.”
“You haven’t had much sleep, and you’ve had too much stress.”
Her rubbing motion stopped and she peeked at him through her fingers. “Same goes for you. Doesn’t seem to be getting you down.”
“I could make up one of the beds in the on-call room.”
“Thanks, but I couldn’t sleep, anyway.”
“Do you want me to drive you home?” he asked.
She looked at him for an extended moment, and he couldn’t figure out what was going on inside her head. It both puzzled and intrigued him.
When she finally spoke, the last thing he expected to hear was, “Maybe I don’t belong in the field if I can’t even tell when someone is lying to me.”
“That’s why you have a partner.”
She stared again, and this time he stopped trying to guess what she’d say and simply enjoyed her undivided attention.
“Have you lied to me since Bella assigned us as partners?” she asked.
“No. I tried to shoo you away from my house, but I wouldn’t consider that a lie.”
“Would you tell me if you had lied?”
“No.”
“Well, at least that’s the truth.”
He needed to find a way to prove to her that he was being honest. The only thing he could think of was to tell her something he didn’t want her to know—something private.
He pondered the idea for less than three seconds before he decided that the risk was worth the reward.
“I want to touch you,” he admitted. “All the time.”
She lifted her head, her eyes wide with shock.
“I want to be close to you, to know you’re safe. I want to make your pain go away.”
“What?”
He couldn’t tell if his attempt to reach out was working, but he’d gone too far to turn back now. “You make me want things I’ve never cared about before.”
Her response was slow, giving him plenty of time to squirm. “Like what?”
“The ability to travel back in time, for starters.”
She straightened, giving him her absolute attention. “To do what?”
“Kill your father. Before I met you. Before he used me to hurt you.”
She swallowed, but she was still with him. She hadn’t cringed or shied away from the violence of his words. “But then you would have never found out about your brother.”
“I would have found another way.”
“Why are you telling me this?” sh
e asked.
“So you’ll know I’m capable of honesty. I understand it won’t change what I did to you, but it might change how you see me in the future.”
“Why do you care?”
He opened his mouth, but there were too many thoughts for any one of them to come out. They all clumped together in a confusing mass that silenced him.
“Adam?” she asked again, her voice quieter now. “Do you care how Bella sees you?”
“No, so long as she knows I’m capable of doing my job.”
“Payton?”
“No, so long as he knows I will kill him if he hurts you.”
“Uh. Okay. Not exactly what I expected, but I can run with that.” She covered the back of his hand with hers. “If you don’t care much about how they see you, then why do you care what I think about you?”
The answer was so obvious, he didn’t understand why she even had to ask. “Because you’re important.”
“So are the others.”
He couldn’t keep his hands to himself any longer, so he pulled her rolling chair closer, until she was perched between his widely spread knees. His fingers settled lightly on her cheek. So warm and soft. “Not like you.”
Mira’s breathing sped, as did her pulse. As close as he was, he could even see the minute changes in the size of her pupils as they expanded to swallow up the golden starbursts. “I’m not going to let you suck me in again. I’m not going to let you seduce me, only to learn later that it was all just a game.”
Seduce her? That he even had a chance to do so was enough to make him want it. Need it. If he could make her feel toward him half of what he felt for her, it would at least level the playing field.
She had kissed him. It had been done in the heat of the moment, and hardly lasted at all, but it had been a kiss—something a woman would never do with a man she didn’t trust, at least for one split second.
The notion gave him hope and thrilled him all at the same time.
He leaned forward and threaded his fingers through her hair. Her eyes fluttered closed before he once again had her full attention.
“No more games,” he said. “If I manage to seduce you again, this time it will be for real.”
She glanced at his mouth. He knew she was thinking about kissing him again. It took every bit of strength he possessed to resist giving her what she wanted. What he wanted.
But he did resist. He had no idea if there was something real between them or not—he’d never had anything real before, so there was no way for him to tell—but if it was, he wasn’t going to ruin whatever fledgling trust she might have for him by moving too fast.
No matter how much he wanted her, he would control himself. She deserved at least that much from him after all the mistakes he’d made with her.
Adam let her go and stood. Her gaze went straight to the bulge in his pants, but there was nothing he could do about that. At least she’d know his desire for her wasn’t a lie.
“I’ll be in my office if you need me,” he said as he went to her door.
She cleared her throat. “You’re just going to leave?”
He paused by the door. “Do you want me to stay?”
She blinked a couple of times, then shook her head. “No, of course not. I’ll check in with you later, after I do some research on our mystery lady.”
“Ruby Rypan?”
“Yes.”
“I plan to do the same. But I urge you to be careful. I don’t know much about her, but I do know that she’s dangerous.”
“That’s okay,” said Mira as she stretched her fingers and rolled up to her keyboard. “So am I.”
As Adam walked away and felt the immediate loss of her presence, he knew that what she said was true.
Mira was dangerous, and there was no body armor in the world that could save him.
Chapter Sixteen
Mira’s research revealed that Ruby Rypan had no life. She rented an upscale apartment, owned a nice car, had suits sent to her from fancy boutiques, and got her hair done on a regular basis. Besides that, the woman did . . . nothing.
There were no meals out with the girls, no movie nights, no gym membership. She didn’t even get cable TV.
“She doesn’t scream evil mastermind,” Mira told Adam, who hovered just behind her, reading over her shoulder.
“She calls no attention to herself. Can you find even a single parking ticket?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“She wants to remain invisible to the authorities. I did exactly the same thing—made sure I looked respectable, kept my head down and my nose clean. People rarely noticed me.”
“I have a hard time believing that. You probably had women all over you, even when you were trying to be in stealth mode.”
He pointed to a video file she had in the background. “Watch it. I bet you see that she has her shields up—completely unapproachable, making no eye contact unless it’s to warn someone away.”
Mira played the video of Ruby inside a local grocery store. She was in a perfectly fitted suit and heels. Her hair was coiled up in a sleek roll. Her appearance was put together and polished, all the way down to the glossy color on her fingernails. Several men looked her way, but not one of them approached her. The two men who drew her attention enough that she glanced their way actually backed up a step and gave her a wide berth.
“See. Shields up. A man would be risking his life making a move on a woman like that.”
“So how do we find out what she’s up to?”
“I’d say we follow her, but I don’t think we’d get far before she saw us. Our best shot is probably going to be to break into her apartment and see if she’s sloppy enough to leave information lying around.”
“That seems like a waste of time, doesn’t it? I mean, a woman as meticulously groomed as she is, as careful as she is with her spending, giving away nothing about herself, with no friends or family popping up—she’s not going to be the type to leave secret files to break my dad out of prison sitting on her kitchen counter.”
“No, but she might have a hiding place. If I get into her apartment, I might be able to find it.”
“You also might get blown up.”
Adam pointed to the copy of Ruby’s financial statements. “She has maid service. A woman who lets a maid come in and clean isn’t leaving explosives lying about.”
“Don’t you think that would make it even more likely for her not to keep files at her apartment?”
“Possibly. But if she thinks her hiding spot is good enough, she might risk it.”
“Why? Why wouldn’t she just live in a dirty apartment?”
“When your life depends on your skills, you constantly test yourself. A maid going through your house every few days is an excellent test.”
“I can’t say it’s how I’d want to live, but I guess it gives us a bit of an edge.”
“How’s that?”
“Because all I have to do is print up some T-shirts with that maid service logo on them, and we have our way in.”
He nodded. “Do you have any surveillance devices handy?”
“Always. I’m not sure how long it will take her to detect them, but I’ll break out the best stuff for this job.”
“She should be at work for a few more hours. That will give us plenty of time to get there and do what we need to do before she gets home.”
“Give me thirty minutes and I’ll meet you in the garage.”
Adam left and Mira went to work.
* * *
Adam was almost to the armory when he saw Gage Dallas turn the corner.
He was nearly as tall as Adam, with short black hair and an angular face. His eyes were a blue so faded, they were almost gray. His clothes were covered in dust and wrinkled enough that he had probably slept in them. The weapons strapped
to his body, however, were perfectly clean.
Even after several weeks of working with the man, Adam still had trouble controlling his emotions every time he saw him. Relief, anxiety, joy. Heartache.
After decades of being separated from his little brother, wondering how he was and whether or not he was safe and happy, here Eli was, safe and walking around with another man’s name.
Gage nodded in greeting at Adam as he neared. “How’s the new partner?”
Adam used every bit of skill he’d ever learned about lying to pretend that Gage was just another colleague, rather than his baby brother. “Fine. A bit rocky at first, but I think she stopped plotting my death.”
Gage grunted. “Softie.”
“I wouldn’t let her hear you say that. She’s gotten pretty good in the sparring ring.”
Gage grinned with pride, but he said nothing.
“I won’t bother to ask you about how your assignment is coming. I know it’s all hush-hush.”
“Almost done.”
“Will you be assigned to help Mira and me when your job is finished?”
Gage shrugged. “Bella’s call.”
Adam hesitated, but knew he’d regret it if he didn’t say something. “I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you—any of you. But you’re one of the few people here who is at least willing to speak to me. I just want you to know how much I appreciate you giving me a chance to earn your trust.”
Gage’s skin tone darkened just enough to tell Adam he’d crossed a line and made his brother uncomfortable.
“When this job is done, drinks are on me,” said Adam.
Gage nodded once in agreement. “Good luck.” He walked away.
Adam slipped into the armory and leaned against the door. His heart was beating too hard. Something close to frantic desperation danced just under his skin.
He wanted to tell Gage who he was so badly, he could barely keep the words locked behind his teeth.
Part of him resented the fact that Gage didn’t recognize him. He knew they’d just been kids when they’d been separated and that Eli had been two years younger—practically a baby. Still, every time he looked at Gage, he knew he was looking at his brother. He saw the genetic connection in the other man’s eyes, height, build, and features. He heard it in his voice.
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