by CJ Lyons
Rose stood, one hand touching her cheek, the other still holding onto Billy. She’d never felt so drained in her life. She needed—no, she wanted…
She spun into Billy’s arms, holding him tight in a no-holds-barred grip, unable to restrain her feelings. As if, after Eve had woken all those emotions, set them free from Rose’s tight confines, she couldn’t harness them anymore. Pandora’s box, unleashed, and Rose had no idea what havoc might ensue.
She raised her lips, found Billy’s for one brief, tender moment. Then she realized her mistake—no, she couldn’t risk losing him. She needed his friendship, needed him at her side. And she’d already risked that by accusing Susan Payne of being a traitor.
Rose lowered her arms, stepped back, more than a little sheepish at her lack of control. “I’m sorry. You and Susan—”
“Me and Susan, what?”
Why was he looking at her like that? As if he half expected her to pull a damn rabbit out of her sleeve? Like a kid getting ready to open his biggest Christmas present ever. And blushing. Since when did Billy Price blush?
She turned away in confusion. “You said you were ready to settle down.”
“I am.” He stepped toward her, one step, a second, until she couldn’t avoid the heat radiating off his body.
“You said you’d found the right woman.” Damn, she felt like a schoolgirl, unable to meet his gaze.
“I have.” He rested his palm against her cheek. “She’s right here in front of me.”
Rose was tempted, so very tempted to raise her face to his, to seek out his lips once more—lips she’d dreamt about. But this was no dream. This was reality, a reality where she’d been hurt too often before. Worse, she couldn’t risk hurting him.
She pushed away from him. “Then why’d you let me believe—”
“I knew I couldn’t make the first move. You’d say the Team comes first, that our friendship came first, some bullshit like that. I know you, Rose Prospero, better than you know yourself. You are a damn stubborn woman who might be one of the best and smartest intelligence operatives I’ve ever worked with, but sometimes you can be absolutely, stark raving blind!”
His eyes grew wide as if he’d surprised himself with his own words. They stared at each other, each daring the other to make the first move as if this were a sparring match.
He didn’t love Susan. He…he wanted her? Knowing everything, all her secrets, all her mistakes and screw-ups? Panic fluttered through her, leaving in its wake a feeling of excitement.
And she knew he was right. She'd been blind. She stepped into his space and took his face between her palms, bringing it down to meet hers. The kiss wasn’t soft or gentle, not at all like her first tentative try. Instead, it was fierce and bruising, fire and heat and passion unleashed in a lightning strike.
Too soon, they broke apart with a gasp. Rose reached for him again, but he took her hand, held her at arm’s length. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Thought you Delta guys were trained to expect the unexpected.” She teased her fingers along his rigid chest muscles, fluttering down his body, until he grabbed that hand as well.
He shook his head. “No. Wait. There’s something I need to tell you.”
She squirmed free of his grip, not liking the sudden pain in his voice, the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “What?”
“I know what Grigor did. In Razgravia.” The words came out hushed, soft—but that didn’t lessen their impact.
“It’s not exactly uncommon knowledge. Nineteen days in Chez Grigor—my least-favorite one-star resort.” She tried to make light of it. How could she ever have a normal relationship with any man after what Grigor and his men had done to her?
But Billy—God, how she’d dreamed of his hands on her, his mouth, of his body making her forget…
“No. You don’t understand. I know everything. I saw everything.” His voice turned urgent. Now he looked right at her, into her, as if seeing the past, and she was the one who flinched and turned away. “He made videos, Rose. We found them after…. It was my duty, searching for intel. I had to—”
She fell onto the cot, her fingers wrapping around the edge in a death grip. “You watched?”
Wordlessly, he sank down beside her. She twisted away from him, staring into the blank corner at the other side of the room.
“You never told me,” she whispered, hating the need in her voice. A need to move past this, to lock the past safely behind steel walls once again. How could she do that when every time she looked at him, she’d know he wouldn’t see her? He’d only see the woman Grigor broke.
He brushed her hair back from her neck. She didn’t flinch from his touch—felt too numb to even register it as if her body was blocking out all sensation, just as it had five years ago.
“I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know how…” Billy Price, Delta leader, uncertain? Never. Was it because he pitied her? Felt sorry for her? Had these past two years been a lie?
“And now?” Her mouth was so dry she could barely get the two words out.
“I meant what I said. I want to settle down with the woman of my dreams. I want you, Rose Prospero. Only you.”
He laid his lips on hers with such tenderness it took her by surprise.
“Please,” he whispered. “I know you have terrible memories of terrible things that no one should have to suffer. But all that made you the woman you are, the woman I love. Please.” He kissed her again when she didn’t respond. “Please, let me create new memories for you, a new future for us both. Together we can do that. I know it. If you trust me. If you can open your heart to me.”
He waited, his face a fingertip away from hers. She blinked, wondering why his face kept blurring. Then decided this wasn’t a time to be listening to her thoughts or memories or even common sense. Instead, she listened to her heart and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, pulling him to her. Not for another kiss, but a simple embrace.
“I don’t know if I know how to trust anymore,” she admitted. “But maybe I can learn.”
He pulled back, kissed her gently on the forehead. “That’s a start. Let’s take care of business. Then you and I are going to a beach, someplace warm and sunny and private where we can lie back and let life happen.”
She couldn’t resist a chuckle at that. As if either of them had ever taken a real vacation in their lives. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter 26
Another knock on the door, breaking the quiet magic that bound her and Billy. Reality sucked. Or at least its timing did.
“Rose…” It was Chase. “Someone’s answered your messages.” Urgency sparked in his voice, and she knew he was counting on her to find the key to saving KC.
She ran one fingertip down Billy’s cheek, along his jaw. “Back to work.”
He nodded but didn’t release her hand from his until they left the bedroom.
The kids sat at the table, a pot of beef stew demolished between them. The computer had a new instant message on the screen. One of her assets, a surgical ICU nurse at Georgetown, had come through. Rose called her back via the computer’s secure connection.
“Claire, it’s Rose. What do you have for me?”
“Rose, perfect timing. My friend, Anish, is right here. He was the resident on the case.”
Rose described the man from the tunnel. “Does that sound like him?”
“Yes. Except he had more than one laceration—although the neck wound was the worst.”
Camouflage? Rose wondered. A man with a single, deep laceration to the neck would stand out, get the cops called. “And his injuries were accidental?”
“Far as I know. Here, let me let Anish tell you all about it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” A man with a deep voice and slight Indian accent came on the line. “I can’t divulge the patient’s name, confidentiality, of course, but we did have a trauma patient brought in last week with a severe neck wound. Terrible accident—visiting his mother-in-law, putting up a storm window and
it broke. Terrible lacerations to the neck and face. By the time he arrived, he was in hemorrhagic shock. We resuscitated him, but he remained in a coma. Family transferred him to a long-term-care facility near Norfolk two days ago.”
“Transferred? Isn’t that a little quick after just a few days in your facility?”
“Yes, but honestly it was a relief. His trachea was partially severed, and he’d suffered a prolonged period of hypoxia.”
“Lack of oxygen to the brain,” Rose translated.
“Yes. He was showing no improvement, yet the family refused to allow further tests to verify his brain activity or consider DNR. Perhaps their own doctors, closer to home, can help them make the adjustment better.”
“So he was basically brain dead?”
The surgeon hesitated. “Still had a heartbeat but totally ventilator dependent, and his EEG was flat, so yes, although we’d have to do more tests before we ever gave the family that diagnosis.”
“Thanks, doctor, you’ve been a huge help.” She hung up and turned to Billy. “So our third man can’t be responsible for any of this.”
“No. But Norfolk.” He frowned. “For some reason, that bothers me.”
“It’s a port city like Savannah,” she suggested.
His eyes went wide. “The president. He’s in Norfolk today to commission a new destroyer in a few hours. I was supposed to escort Susan there.”
“Billy, you can’t seriously think—” She broke off. He was right. The Preacher wouldn’t have hesitated to target that kind of high-profile crowd, so why would his children? “But the base would've been secured, all traffic in and out of port stopped days ago, no-fly zone in place—”
He turned to look at her. “Just playing a hunch. You think I’m wrong?”
“No. I think you’re right. We’re going to Norfolk.”
“You’ll never get on base,” Chase said. “It'll be locked down tight.”
“Maybe not. But we can check out our guy from the tunnel and his family.” Rose clicked on the computer to where a new message waited. “Claire sent me his name: Malcolm Bennett. Shadyside Care Facility, Room 112.”
“She gave him up? She knows she could get fired and a huge fine, right?” Billy said.
Rose shrugged. “She knows.”
“This is what you did. All those years with the CIA. You convinced people to break the rules.”
“I wouldn’t say convinced. More like gave them a choice. Which rules were worth following and which weren’t? Like Claire. Her cousin was killed by an IED in Afghanistan. So when I call and need a patient’s name, she knows I wouldn’t be asking unless I was trying to stop someone like the men who killed her cousin. Makes the decision easy.” She turned to him. “Wasn’t it the same with Delta? A lot of your job was working with locals.”
He snorted. “Yeah, but the Army takes a different approach. Bribery. It’s a whole lot quicker than your touchy-feely, win-their-hearts way.” He paused, pulling up a map of the area, finger tracing the quickest route. They could be in Norfolk in under an hour. “What makes you think Bennett’s family will be with him?”
“The man who took me was focused on retribution for my killing his father and brothers.”
“That’s what the man on the Mall said yesterday as well. You paying for the Preacher and his brothers’ deaths. Brothers plural. How many of them are there?”
She shrugged. “What’s important is that they care enough to move this guy close to where they are. If you were a fanatic, brought up to believe that your family was destined to be the next messiahs, to lead this country to greatness, would you leave a wounded brother unattended?”
“No man left behind,” Chase said.
Rose turned to him. “We’ll find her, Chase. I promise.”
He stared at her long and hard before finally nodding. She grabbed her gear and turned to the door where Billy was waiting. She glanced back at Chase and nodded to where Jay and Eve sat talking. “You’ll keep them safe?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
She smiled at him. “No. I don’t.”
She and Billy headed out to the van. As they sped down the dirt road leading to the highway, Billy said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and EZ will be there. I’d like a conversation with that rat.”
<><><>
The Shadyside Rest Home was a beige, single-floor facility on a small patch of land just outside of the naval base. Rose and Billy arrived just after one o’clock and, here in Norfolk, the sun was shining. Everywhere, it seemed, except over Shadyside. The rest home was cloaked in perpetual shadows cast by the taller office buildings that flanked it.
Billy parked the van, and Rose undid her seat belt. She dialed Billy’s burner cell. He answered, kept it on speaker as he slid it back into his jacket pocket, behind his handkerchief, while she muted her handset.
“Remember what we decided,” he said. “Keep out of sight. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I don’t like you going in without backup.”
“It’s a nursing home, not Mogadishu. I think I can handle it.” He leaned over the center console to give her a quick kiss. “I’ll be back,” he promised.
Rose couldn’t help herself. Allowing her emotions to escape their locked boxes, to give them freedom—it made her feel giddy and selfish and thrilled and…she grabbed Billy’s wrist and hauled him back for a proper kiss. One that neither of them would forget.
When she released him, he made a small, animal noise, and she knew he wanted more. She grinned in satisfaction. Mission accomplished.
“Okay, you can go now,” she said, dismissively. A blue Volvo pulled up beside them, and a woman got out.
Billy took a moment to regain his composure, a sly smile crossing his features. “When this is all over, you and I are going to have a proper conversation in a place where we finally have some privacy.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she assured him, her hand squeezing his thigh in a most unprofessional manner.
To her surprise, he took her hand, turned it over and kissed the sensitive skin of her palm. Gently, carefully. As if he understood how very hard this was for her, revealing her true feelings, letting someone inside the barbed wire she’d barricaded her heart behind all these years.
“I won’t be long,” he promised.
Rose slid over to the driver’s side and listened through the cell phone as Billy talked his way past the reception desk. Such a smooth operator. He even whistled as he walked down the hall—more for her benefit than keeping in character, she was certain.
“Bennett’s in the fourth room on the south side,” he said. “I’m going in.”
Silence for a moment. And then the sound of a man’s voice.
“Billy, what took you so long?” EZ said. “I was expecting you hours ago.”
<><><>
Billy acted surprised, even though he wasn’t. Reminded himself that he was here to gather intel, not to grab the pistol EZ held on him and turn it on the man who’d betrayed them all. Much as he so very dearly wanted to.
He raised his hands in surrender. The room was small, one window, blinds drawn tight, a hospital bed with a man lying in it surrounded by machines, a single wooden chair, bathroom, and EZ. EZ stood beside Billy, just out of arm’s reach, weapon pointed at Billy’s head, and gestured for Billy to move forward.
Now came the tricky part. Thankfully, EZ made it easy.
“Hands on the bed, lean forward,” he commanded. Billy stepped toward the bed, slipping the phone with the open line to Rose under the top blanket as EZ frisked him and took his Beretta, knife, and second phone.
When he was finished, EZ jerked Billy up by the collar and pivoted him down onto the chair.
“Told you he wouldn’t be able to resist the bait,” he said, perching on the edge of the bed and talking as if the man in the coma could hear them. He patted the man’s hand. The steady beeping of the monitor and whoosh of the ventilator were the only indications that the man was still alive. �
��Thanks, bro.”
“Is he really your brother?” Billy asked. “Or is that a term of endearment?”
EZ gave him a long, hard stare. “My father had six sons, one daughter. Thanks to you people, we’ve lost all but three. So don’t speak of my family again or you’ll regret it.” Then he laughed, a sound that was unnerving in the tiny room filled with the noise of the machines keeping the man alive. “What am I saying? He’s going to regret it anyway, isn’t he?”
Billy decided to play along, focus on business rather than EZ’s obvious personal issues. The computer specialist had always been a bit on the manic side, but nothing like this. Was the pressure getting to him? If so, Billy could use that.
“Three of you are going to stop us?”
EZ snapped his gaze to meet Billy’s. “We already have. You really don’t get it, do you? We already won. Not today, not last week with the glorious passing of our father. We won twenty years ago when our father first conceived his plan. The might of this entire corrupt government cannot eclipse his brilliance.”
“Twenty years ago? You would've been, what, thirteen?” It wasn’t exactly the intel Billy had come looking for, but as long as it kept EZ talking.
“Twelve. Sent to live with foster parents. Followers of my father but accepted in your society.”
Billy thought back to EZ’s personnel file. “Your parents were professors at MIT.”
EZ nodded. “Exactly the kind of people whose child prodigy would earn the attention of the intelligence services. When the NSA recruited me, everything unfolded as my real father had planned. As difficult as it was leaving him as a child, the day I knew I was exactly where he needed me was the proudest day of my life.”
This was nuts. Whether or not it was true, Billy needed info about the here and now. “And today’s another proud day for your family, isn’t it? Assassinating the president?”
