by CJ Lyons
“I’m sorry, Billy. So sorry. I warned you about how unstable she was behaving—”
He stepped back, out the door, needing distance from her words. Chase awkwardly moved aside, gave him space. “I don’t believe you. Who is this witness? I want to question him—”
“He’s in surgery at Memorial Medical Center,” Teresa supplied in a soft voice. “But I have the report from the sheriff’s deputy who took his statement.”
“Reports can be faked—”
“Billy—” He hated the pity in Susan’s voice. “I’m sorry, really I am. But as of now, Rose Prospero is a fugitive. Considered armed and dangerous. Until we verify one of those bodies is hers.”
Chase straightened at that, ready to jump into the fray, but Billy waved him silent. He hauled in a breath, steadied himself, and faced Susan dead-on. “And my team?”
She frowned. “We need to debrief everyone involved, confirm that Rose acted on her own. The NSD will take lead on that since they’ll be deciding what, if any, charges are brought.”
Leaving the fate of his people to a bunch of damn lawyers. Like hell. “Are you disbanding us? Taking us into custody?”
She stared at him long and hard, then jerked her chin, obviously making up her mind. “No. Not yet. But call in all your operatives, have them ready to speak to the NSD. In the meantime, I’ll tell my colleagues on the oversight committee that we’ll need to delay any decision. It will be a hard sell, believe me. They’ll probably want to hear from you as well. Once word of what happened in Savannah gets out, well, I might not be able to stop them. You need to be prepared for the worst.” She glanced at Teresa and Chase. “All of you.”
Since the worst had already happened, losing Rose, preparing for anything else was easy. Billy nodded his understanding. “If you'll excuse me, I obviously have work to do.”
His office was thirty seconds down the hall. He made it in ten. Only after he’d shut the door and stood before the large-screen TV that served as his computer monitor did he ask the questions he never wanted to ask.
Could Rose be dead?
They hadn’t found her body. But no one could survive that inferno.
Finally, he asked himself the question he wanted to ignore…wanted to pretend away…Could Rose have done what Susan suggested? Could she have betrayed her team, everything she stood for? Snapped, finally pushed too far?
His hands clenched so tight his nails were ready to draw blood.
No. Never. Not Rose...
Focus, Price. You’re in command now.
People depended on him; the entire team would be looking to him for leadership. He couldn’t let them down. Couldn’t let Rose down.
Billy raised his clenched fists. Felt powerless to open them. So he did the next best thing. He smashed one into the nearest TV screen, then pivoted and used the other to punch a hole in the wall behind him.
A haze of red engulfed him as he proceeded around the office, pounding his fists into anything he found. Twice before in close-quarters combat a similar berserker fever had overwhelmed him. Both times it had saved his life, given him the edge he needed to survive.
This time there was no human enemy to vent his rage on. He needed carnage, loud, shattering carnage.
Anything to drown the despair and fury. Despair that he had lost Rose. Fury at himself—he had never found the courage to tell her what he felt, to reveal his emotions.
Coward. One TV screen shattered with a quick jab, the one below it with a sidekick that sent a rain of glass and plastic over Billy. Another hole in the drywall, this time from a kick, a quick sweep of his hand sent his espresso maker and china cups flying through the air.
Then he stopped. A single large mug had survived his wrath. A thick, ugly Baltimore Ravens mug that had no business anywhere near the delicate porcelain coffee set. It stood, waiting for its owner to return and ask Billy for a refill. Billy’s entire body trembled as he drew a deep breath. He extended a hand, touched the mug as if afraid it wasn’t real, then caressed it.
Billy Price, former Delta Force, who had once held his dying best friend in his arms without shedding a tear, hugged Rose’s mug to his chest and collapsed to the floor.
Chapter 17
“I’m really worried about him, Chase,” Teresa said after Senator Payne left. She pulled Chase down the hall to Billy’s closed door. “Hear that?”
Chase balanced his crutch against the wall. He’d have to be deaf not to hear the thundering crashing coming from the Team’s second-in-command’s office. Not to mention the cries of fury, grunts that sounded inhuman, and finally the sound of a man choking on tears.
“I’ll take care of it,” Chase assured Teresa. He wished to hell he had an idea how. KC was safe—thank you, God! Would that make Billy look at Chase and feel worse?
Teresa touched Chase’s arm, reminding him he wasn’t alone in this.
“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Tears crowded her words. “And I don’t care what anyone says. Rose was no traitor. She’d never betray us.”
She left to return to her post in communications. Chase stood in the empty hallway. At the far end of the corridor, Rose’s office door stood open as always, as if she might come rushing out, some new insight or plan gleaming in her eyes, at any minute. In front of him, Billy’s closed door, the wood doing little to mask the anguish of the man behind it.
A few minutes ago, after seeing KC alive, safe, unharmed and on her way home, all Chase had felt was elation. Then he heard about the awful cost this mission had extracted. He glanced at Billy’s door. He knew exactly how the man felt. If something had happened to KC, he would have acted the same.
But, still, there was a team to lead, missions to prepare...a funeral to plan. Maybe. They hadn’t actually recovered Rose’s body, not yet.
What if they were all wrong? What if this had been a trap, set by Grigor? Maybe he was working with the Preacher’s group and had demanded Rose as payment?
For the first time since he’d heard about Rose, Chase felt a ray of hope. Grigor had more to gain by keeping her alive than killing her—and Rose wasn’t easy to kill. She might very well still be alive.
At least he had something to offer Billy. Chase opened the door to Billy’s office. He stepped inside, then stopped. Aw, hell.
The place was a disaster area; an F5 tornado wouldn’t have done as much damage. But that wasn’t the worst. Chase pivoted and shut the door behind him. Only then did he approach Billy.
The older man was slumped against a wall, knees drawn up, head and hands sagging in a posture of defeat. A purple and black coffee mug dangled from his fingers. Rose’s cup—the only Ravens fan on the Team, she’d taken a perverse pride in using that mug every chance she got.
“Billy,” Chase said.
“Get out,” came the muffled reply. No heat in the words. As if even that had been drained from the man.
This was worse than he’d imagined. He’d seen Billy effortlessly function under stress at an almost superhuman efficacy. Edge was his nickname in Delta Force. Chase was former Marine Force Recon. He knew if fellow members of your team gave you a name like that, you’d had to have done a helluva lot to earn it.
“Billy, I think Rose might be alive,” Chase said, uncertain what else to say. He could just walk away, give Billy time to come to grips with his grief, but they didn’t have time. The Team needed a leader. They had to track down Grigor and the Preacher’s people before they could implement their plans.
Billy didn’t look up. “No, she’s not.”
“It was a trap. Think, Grigor has no reason to kill her. He would have ordered his people to keep her alive.”
In a strike faster than a cobra’s, Billy was on his feet, one arm pressed against Chase’s throat, forcing him off balance, his back to the wall.
“Shut up!”
Ah, a spark of life left. Chase decided to run with it. Even with one leg in a cast, he was still more than a decade younger than Billy. He used his crutch to sweep one o
f Billy’s legs out as he rammed his head into Billy’s chin.
Billy staggered back, quickly caught his balance, and came after Chase, swinging.
“How can you give up so easily on Rose?” Chase taunted. “I never would if it was someone I loved.”
That earned Chase a jab to the belly, followed by a shove against the desk. Chase landed, protecting his injured leg, but the impact still was painful enough that the next blow he aimed at Billy, an uppercut to Billy’s jaw, carried the weight of his pain.
Billy stumbled back, eyes dilated with battle fury, and Chase braced himself for a fight he might not be able to win. Then Billy blinked, his gaze coming back into focus. Chase caught his breath and extended his hand. “Pax?”
Billy staggered for a moment as if re-orienting himself, ran his tongue over his teeth, checking to see if they were all intact, finally took Chase’s hand. “Yeah.”
His voice wasn’t quite back to normal, but close enough. Mission accomplished.
“So how do we find Rose?” Chase asked.
“We don’t.”
“What? There’s a chance she’s alive. We can't, we can’t just—”
“She’s dead, Chase.”
“How do you know? How can you be so sure? If she made it out alive before—”
“That’s how I know.” Billy blew out his breath, slumped back against the wall, his hand snagging the coffee cup from where it had rolled under a chair. He curled both hands around it, his fingers stroking it as if it was a living thing. “One of my last missions with Delta, we intercepted a computer from a high-profile member of Saddam Hussein’s family.”
“What’s that have to do with Rose?”
“When Grigor held her those nineteen days, he filmed what he did to her, what he had his men do to her. He shared the recordings with men with similar tastes, traded them.” Billy practically spat out the words. Now there was a definite edge to his voice, and his eyes were devoid of anything but hatred. “Including our target. I watched them, Chase—it was part of the job, I had to. Christ, the things he did to her—”
“Billy—”
The older man shook Chase’s sympathy away. “She never knew I knew what happened to her. But I saw something that changed my life. The way she refused to yield, her strength, presence—in a warped way, it was beautiful. She was beautiful.”
“You fell in love with her.”
“Yeah, kind of. Sick, isn’t it?”
“You never told her?”
Billy shook his head. “No. Think of how she’d feel—knowing that I’d seen what he did to her, that I watched that. She’d think I was a pervert. And there’s no way she’d let me stay on here if she knew how I felt—so I settled for second best. Keeping my mouth shut and working with her.”
“Why don’t you want to go after her? Why are you so certain she’s dead? A woman who could live through that once—”
“That’s why,” Billy cut Chase short. “Surviving that once, no one would ever go back to that again. Rose would kill herself before she’d let them capture her again. Especially now that she has the Team to worry about. She’d never allow Grigor or the Preacher’s people to use her against us.”
Chase couldn’t really argue with that. But, still, he couldn’t believe Rose would've taken the easy way out. It just wasn’t like her. Maybe he just wanted her to still be alive, so he refused to accept the truth.
Knowing what horrors awaited Rose if she was still alive, Chase thought maybe Billy was right. It would be better if she were dead.
<><><>
The hours of waiting should have passed quickly with the after-action reports, calls from Susan demanding access to KC after her debriefing with the NDS and FBI, and Chase and Billy working to put together what had actually happened in Savannah without having access to any real data—all the evidence belonged to the NDS and FBI.
Hard to piece anything together when no one would talk to Billy. Everyone wanted to distance themselves from Rose and her team. Hell, he couldn’t even get State or Langley to confirm that Grigor had left Razgravia, much less if the dictator had returned or where his present location might be.
Instead of the busy work filling the hours and keeping Billy’s mind off Rose, every task only emphasized how much they would lose without her.
He took a quick shower and changed into a spare suit, but the black silk felt like sackcloth and ashes instead of a beautifully draped Italian design.
Finally, around five-thirty in the morning, Teresa tapped on his office door. “Billy?” her voice was tentative, filled with sorrow.
“Yes? Is it Rose?” He didn’t try to hide his spark of hope—even as his brain processed Teresa’s lack of enthusiasm.
“Line two. The Chatham County coroner.”
Chatham County. Where the bio lab was located. Billy stabbed the button for the line before he could lose his nerve. Teresa watched him, obviously worried. He spun his chair away from her and closed his eyes. Somehow, he managed to keep his voice steady and businesslike. “Price here.”
“This is Dr. Forrester. Someone there called earlier, asking to be notified if we made a positive ID of one Rose Prospero?”
Billy bent over his desk, feeling as if he’d been sucker-punched. “Yes, sir. You have the correct place.”
“Are you next of kin?” The man’s words dripped with the Deep South.
He and Rose knew the next of kin for each of the thirty-four operators on their team. But as far as Billy knew, Rose had none herself. He cleared his throat, his grip on the phone so tight that his fingers went numb. After all the lives Rose had saved, would he and the Team be the only people to mourn her? “Yes, sir. That’s me.”
“All right. Then it’s my duty to inform you that I have regretfully made a conclusive identification of a body belonging to one Rose Prospero. The FBI is holding the body as evidence, so I’m afraid our office will be unable to help you with any arrangements, but—”
Billy dropped the phone onto its cradle, not caring what else the man had to say. Not caring about anything as the world dimmed around him, all the color draining into gray. Rose was gone. Confirmed. No denying it.
And yet…why couldn’t he actually, truly believe? He'd meant what he told Chase—there was no reason for Rose to be alive. And now he had evidence. Proof.
To hell with proof. He cradled his face in his hands. Hated himself for wishing Rose was still alive. Even if it meant she was in Grigor's hands. Wishing…what good had wishing ever done anyone? He had to act on the facts, not vague hopes and wishes.
“Billy?” Teresa’s voice came from the doorway. He jerked his head up, half expecting to see Rose behind her.
Teresa leaned forward but didn’t step over the threshold, as if some invisible force held her back. Probably for the best. He didn’t feel much like holding any kind of civilized conversation. Not now.
“Tell Chase and the others. Rose is confirmed KIA.” The words snapped through the air, an order rather than a request. His military training was the only thing he had left to hang onto; it was all that held him together right now.
Teresa blinked. Billy prayed she wouldn’t start crying or expect him to comfort her. Thankfully, she turned away and left. He sat there, his body heavy, not sure if he’d ever have the strength to move again.
The only thing he could think about was that he should have found the courage to tell Rose how he felt. Should have done a better job of protecting her, caring for her.
That he’d failed her. Again.
Grigor would pay, he vowed. Pay dearly—and if Billy had anything to do with it, he’d go out begging for mercy just like he’d made Rose beg when he’d held her captive.
Anger. That’s what he needed. It raged through his veins with enough strength to push him free of the chair. Grigor. He was going to find the bastard and, laws or no laws, rules or no rules, goddamn Geneva Convention or not, he was going to kill the man.
Hands fisted at his sides, he lurched down the ha
ll to the office beside his. Rose’s office. With its door always open, her gentle scent perfuming the air, its archaic world map on the wall instead of modern computer screens…all that was left of the woman he loved.
It took everything he had to step inside. His gaze locked on the old-fashioned safe sitting in the corner. It was an old lockbox, iron, depending on an intricate system of tumblers for its security. Once used by the railroad in the days of the Pony Express, it had a slot on top to deposit valuable mail, and a heavy knob on the front that would defy any modern-day thief.
The vault of sighs, Rose had once called it. Team members deposited their final messages to loved ones, knowing that their most intimate secrets would remain unread until it was time for Rose to follow their last wishes.
The last time Rose had opened the safe had been to retrieve Victor Krakov’s final letter after the Preacher had the SEAL killed.
She’d been afraid she would have to open it again last week when Lucky went missing. Billy remembered watching her caress the curlicues of engraved iron as they discussed who would talk to Lucky’s family. Not discussed, not really. Rose never delegated that kind of duty.
Now, it was Billy’s turn to shoulder the burden. He’d done it before, for his Delta team. But this time, as he twirled the dial, entering the combination that only he and Rose knew, he felt strange. Embarrassed. As if he were prying, trespassing where he didn’t belong.
If not him, then who? Would anyone outside the team be mourning Rose Prospero?
A man’s heavy footfall and the clump of a crutch sounded behind him. Billy hunched over the safe as if protecting Rose’s secrets.
“It’s okay, Chase. I have this.” The final tumbler fell into place, and the door opened.
“Yes, sir.” Chase didn’t move.
Billy ignored the Marine as he thumbed through the sealed envelopes. All sizes and shapes, most cheap office stationery. A few containing thumb drives, photos, memory cards. Then his fingers touched one that was thick, the envelope’s flap edged with scallops. He didn’t have to look to know it was the correct one. The old-world feel to the paper, the weight of the stock, the smell of vellum. Rose.
