Way of the Warrior

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “The black Honda,” he said.

  She blew out a breath and nodded. “Good choice, since it’s the one I had delivered for us. Looks rather sad and inconspicuous, right?”

  His jaw tightened and his hands clenched. “Was that some kind of test?”

  She shook her head. “Nah, I just wanted to make sure I picked a decent getaway car.”

  Had she not been looking at him, she wouldn’t have seen the slight lift at the corner of his mouth. It happened so fast, there and gone, but she had seen it and relief made her want to dance a victory jig. Badass Delta Force commander indeed.

  He shrugged. “Let’s do it then.”

  Vivi pulled the large duffel bag out of the back of the Suburban, ran a device detector over it before pulling everything out and running the detector over those as well. She found seven more bugs, ripped them out of the seams of the clothing and the bag, and headed to the Honda.

  They made the switch quickly and were on the road three minutes later. She hated that it was smaller because that put her much closer to Rook.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as he looked out the window.

  “We’ll be traveling to Warrenton, Oregon.” She let that sink in. “You’re familiar with Warrenton, right?”

  He nodded sharply before he took a deep breath.

  “Are you okay?”

  He flexed his hands on his thighs, so very obviously not okay. He remained silent. “I’m right as rain, Olivia Bentwood.”

  And with that, she headed in the direction of Manhattan, Kansas, a convicted killer at her side, and a boatload of trouble in her lap.

  CHAPTER 2

  Olivia Bentwood was a tiny woman. Probably no taller than five-two, she was slender, delicate, but curved in all the right places. Big brown eyes dominated a heart-shaped face and her skin, so smooth and creamy, made his palms itch. Her high cheekbones rouged when she was angry, frustrated, or embarrassed.

  Rook didn’t want to notice these things. Hated that he did. But the goddamn woman was a siren, luring him in with her gamine features and soft, husky tone.

  And she’d broken him out of prison.

  She’d surprised him. Beyond her reason for being there, her audacity, her bravado had struck a chord in Rook. She seemed just as stubborn as her brother, Michael. But she’d stood up to that shithead guard and then Rook. Not backing down when he’d threatened and done his level best to intimidate the sexy-as-hell woman. With her long, curly brown hair and fuck-me eyes, she was trouble on two legs—stubborn trouble.

  He rubbed his own eyes, fatigue pulling at him. Her smell, something elusive, feminine, and reminding him of wildflowers, permeated the tiny car. He laid his head back, tried to breathe through the sudden case of lust and, yeah, fear. How the hell had he ended up in this place? Who had pegged him as the fall guy for an op his troop should never have been involved in? The truth was there, but in jail he’d had no resources to ferret them out. His lawyers thought him delusional. The judge at his trial thought him a killer. The families of his men hated him with a passion. All, apparently, except for one.

  Endgame. The word whispered through Rook’s mind, finding purchase in a past he’d thought buried for nearly two years. Only one other person besides Rook had known the truth of that single day in the mountains of the Hindu Kush outside of Kunar Province, and he’d not made it out alive. Knight.

  “You should rest,” she said softly.

  He took a deep breath, felt the isolation of the last nine months press in on him, then release. He wasn’t alone now. Fuck. “Who sent you?”

  “I told you my brother sent me.”

  “Your brother was always a pain in the ass.” He watched the cars pass on the other side of the highway, wanting to punch and hit something. Michael had been a devoted soldier. He’d loved his sister, loved his country, and had wanted to start a family of his own when he finished his fourth and final tour. Now, he was dust in the wind. “He sent you on a fool’s errand.”

  She shrugged but kept her gaze pinned on the road ahead of them. “I’m a big girl. Michael was the most honorable man I’ve ever known. The truth was so embedded in his DNA that to separate him from it would have killed him long before the bomb that blew up your unit did.”

  Her words were confirmation that Michael knew much more than he’d ever let on. “What truth?”

  She glanced at him then, her eyes pinning him like a butterfly to a collection. “All truth. But in your case, you know exactly what truth I’m talking about, Sergeant.”

  “We each have our own truths. And sometimes they are all a lie.” Five men, all gone in a single instant. Greed was at the root of their deaths. But there was also a much more sinuous snake that slithered along the periphery. Rook needed to find the head of that snake.

  “Michael came to me over two years ago,” she began, voice full of pain and something else Rook couldn’t place. Love? Possibly. “His command sergeant major had gotten drunk after a particularly bad firefight. I believe your unit lost Sgt. First Class Jonah Knight in that battle of Kunar Province. You took Jonah Knight’s loss hard.”

  For a split second, Rook was back in that firefight, mired down once again in the hell that was the Battle of Ganjgal.

  The sun had been so fucking hot and bright that day, and fire had burned everywhere. Chunks of debris rained down, and he smelled the blood, heard the cries for help, felt the bite as pieces of concrete gouged by bullets tore through his skin. Rook shook his head, pushing the memories down. There was no time for them now. Because if he were to be truthful with this woman who’d come on her crazy-ass venture of finding said truth, he’d have to tell her he not only lost Knight that day, he’d lost himself too. They’d been through hell together. So many battles they’d pulled each other alive from and then Knight wasn’t there anymore.

  She took his silence for encouragement to continue. “You said things that night that led my brother to certain conclusions. You spoke of betrayal and righting wrongs—how your team was in the wrong place at the wrong time. My brother spoke of you often, but after that incident, he decided he would do whatever he could to find out what happened in Kunar Province. ‘There’s a truth somewhere in there that will set him free, Vivi. I’ve got to find it,’ he said. You were his family at that point, and Michael always took care of his family.”

  He wanted to rail at her to shut up. Freedom was so close. He didn’t need to hear about honorable Michael and his insane crusade to save the un-savable. He could ditch her and take off, just disappear where nobody would ever find him.

  But the truth. Where would that leave the truth? He owed Knight. He owed Michael and the four other men who’d given their lives in a fight two years after that fuck-up in Kunar. That last battle in Mogadishu hadn’t been for God and country but rather a self-serving entity that wanted the secrets of Kunar kept silent.

  “My brother’s last words to me were, ‘Find the truth, Vivi. He saved me. Help me save him.’ I have the tools, the connections to get you in front of who did this. But we need verification. Because if it’s who all the roads lead to, we could be signing our own death warrants.”

  He laughed, surprised at the sound that felt like rusty nails scraping his throat. “Here’s a truth for you. My death warrant was signed in Kunar over two years ago. I’ve been living on borrowed time, Olivia Bentwood.”

  “Time is finite for us all, Rook Granger,” she said, mimicking his use of her full name. “But I made a promise to my brother as the air left his body. And by God, not you, the men responsible, or any-fucking-body else will keep me from seeing it through.”

  The woman was as batshit as her brother. “Even if it means your life?”

  She nodded. “Even then.”

  He laid his head back against the headrest. Her words were another nail in his coffin. He knew damn good and well what Michael Bentwood had discovered
about the incident in Kunar, and he wished he’d never gotten drunk after he’d seen Knight’s body loaded into the plane for transport back to the States.

  Nothing he could do now. Whoever was responsible for that battle two years ago had decided it was time to take Rook out. And they’d done it in Mogadishu, Somalia, nine months ago. Best guess, Michael’s poking had prodded the beast, and that beast had destroyed Rook’s entire unit, then pinned it on him when he’d been the only one to survive. Case closed. Loose ends tied up.

  “I’ve got questions I must have answered,” he bit out.

  She glanced at him. “Soon,” she said and focused back on the road.

  He closed his eyes and waited for soon to come around.

  CHAPTER 3

  It took them a little over an hour and a half to make it to their destination in Manhattan, Kansas. Her contact at the airfield had left the gate open and a light on. She pulled into the main gate, got out of the car, and locked the gate behind them.

  Vivi breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled up to the main building and put the car in park. After the intensity of their earlier conversation, she’d needed the break and was glad things were going so smoothly. She got out and retrieved the duffel from the back, setting it on the hood of the car.

  “Here,” she said as she threw him a change of clothes and a single boot in his size. “I’d suggest you change out of that lovely prison orange. The door to the building is open, and there’s a bathroom in the back.” She threw him a small packet wrapped in gray plastic. “Put this in the toilet tank once you’ve showered and cleaned up. I need you to wipe it all down, no prints, please. Put the prison suit in the dumpster out back.”

  He caught the packet, looked at her with a raised brow, and headed into the building. The man didn’t walk—he stalked. The prosthetic wasn’t a hindrance in any way. If anything, it made him even more badass. It was eerie how he was so in control of his space and how the environment around him morphed to his presence. She took her first deep breath in well over four hours once the door shut behind him. Then she stripped, right there in the darkness of the parking lot, changing into black cargos, a black hoodie, and combat boots.

  They were going to have to hike once they made it to their ultimate destination in Warrenton. The former Delta Force member living on that property didn’t play, and while he was expecting them, pulling up to his front door wasn’t an option.

  Vivi pulled out her laptop. It was an off-market computer, though no less high-end, and she’d spec’d it out last week for this job. In the Company one week. Rogue the next. Who would have thought Olivia Bentwood capable of such a thing?

  She booted up the device and stroked it as if it were her lover. Lots of RAM, 32GB, an SSD hard drive, and a 64-bit quad-core processor completed the unit. She’d installed a Linux operating system because of the security. She’d also installed an in-device Wi-Fi system that would allow her to piggyback off CIA satellites. She would remain untraceable because she’d created the program that allowed her to mask her presence on the originating IP address. There was a certain irony in using her employer’s resources to perpetrate this crime. She booted up, brought the encryption software online and shot out the first email to the man she was going to owe big-time for his help.

  ALL IN, she typed before she shot off the email and shut down the device. The recipient of the information had the mate to her sender’s key for the encryption. He’d be able to unlock her messages with a series of letters and numbers she’d designed. If he shared her information, she and Rook were screwed. But right now, the man sitting in Washington was her only hope.

  “What are you doing?”

  Vivi froze as his voice stroked over her eardrums, sank into her skin, and forced her heart to beat faster. She shut off the computer and stuffed it back in her duffel. “Things,” she responded as she turned around.

  This put her back to the car and Rook at her front. Much closer than she expected. He cocked his head and stared at her, the night around them making his eyes appear endlessly deep. God, he was such a big man. Dressed now in the same type of garb she wore, he appeared every inch the spec-ops soldier he was. He’d donned the black skull cap she’d stuffed in his pack earlier today. Worried he might get cold, she’d put it in on a whim. It was snowing in Oregon right now. Why she’d been thinking of him, she had no idea.

  Except that he was hers now. Yeah, once her brother had painted his picture of Rook in her mind, he’d become hers. Michael had saved Vivi’s life. Rook had saved Michael’s. Debts had to be paid. She’d never been so glad the CIA had recruited her out of high school as she was when Michael had asked for her help. It had nearly destroyed Vivi when she’d gotten the call he was injured.

  He’d had massive internal injuries. They’d operated and managed to extend his life for two days. Long enough for Vivi to get there, speak with him, and say good-bye.

  Tears clouded her vision, falling over the precipice of her eyelid and drifting down her cheek. Rook raised his hand, and she flinched. He halted, his look going from concerned to closed. But his hand continued to move and before she could blink, he wiped the tears from her face. She sobbed then, overwhelmed by the tenderness.

  “Michael was one of the finest men I ever served with. He loved you. I’m sorry he’s gone,” Rook said in a gruff voice.

  Vivi glanced up then and became caught in his pitch-black gaze. The moment stretched taut, a yawning chasm between them with the promise of something neither needed nor were looking for. She inhaled, and he moved closer. He tipped her head back with nothing more than his finger at her chin.

  Vivi reached for his hand, grabbing it, but he took control, meshing their palms and entwining their fingers.

  Then he took her lips and her mind in one fell swoop. And it was a taking, no doubt about it. She lost herself as his tongue licked into her mouth, finding every heated hollow while his lips sipped at her, tasting, commanding her tongue to dance with his.

  If his body was heat, his mouth was a supernova, firing every synapse in her brain, forcing her against him. He accepted her, pulling her closer, wrapping his hands in her hair and tugging until he had her right where he wanted her. How long it went on, she didn’t know. She was lost to the mastery of him, the undeniable pull that was Rook Granger. She gorged on the taste of mint and male, and he breathed fire into her, making her wanton.

  He rolled his hips into her stomach, and the feel of his hard cock made her moan. Her hands dug into the firm skin that covered the steel muscles of his back. Another roll of his hips and she was lifting her legs, wrapping them around his hips as he pushed her against the Honda.

  The cold of the glass on her now exposed back had her gasping, bringing reality crashing down. She went stiff against him, disbelief cooling the fire that he’d built inside her. His hands were on her skin, and holy shit, it was heaven.

  Vivi pulled her mouth away, pushing his head back and lowering her legs. “Stop.”

  He growled. Honest to God growled, and Vivi wanted nothing more than to climb back up his body and start all over.

  “We can’t do this,” she said. “Not until we get you cleared.”

  He pulled in a deep breath and stepped away from her. Her hands fisted. She missed his skin beneath her fingers. Missed his hands on hers.

  “That might never happen,” he said, his face hard, eyes glittering in the meager light.

  “We must focus. Right is right. This,” she said, gesturing between them, “isn’t imperative.”

  He smiled then, and she damn near melted into a puddle at his feet. She’d seen the wry twist of his lips, the sexy sneer and the flat line of irritation on his scrumptious mouth. But his full-blown smile blew her away.

  She put a fist to her stomach and held up a hand. She was so screwed. His gaze moved over her face, cataloging every nuance of her expression. That smile never waned.

 
; He glanced down her body, a single glance, but it was enough to convey intent she didn’t know if she was ready to meet. “I think it’s very imperative.”

  The click of her jaw as her mouth fell open was loud in the sudden silence. She stared up at him like a moron. His face in relief was beautiful. Lit by his smile, it was drool-worthy.

  They gazed at each other for long moments, the intensity of what flared between them settling into a simmer. She realized she was in way over her head. But she hadn’t been kidding with him. They had to move, and fast. Vivi pulled away from the car, straightening her spine and tossing her hair over her shoulder. Rook crossed his arms over his massive chest and waited.

  He didn’t even look affected anymore. Except for that very large, very intimidating bulge in his pants.

  “We have to get to Warrenton. Time’s wasting.”

  He grunted. So they were back on relatively safe footing again. She breathed in a sigh of relief.

  “How are we getting there?” he asked.

  She smiled then, and his gaze narrowed. Under his stare, she knew what it was to feel hunted. She pointed in the direction of the lone hanger.

  He shook his head, but before he could voice a negative response, she picked up her duffel and set off in the direction of the plane.

  “Seriously, I haven’t flown in years,” he called out.

  She stopped. “Since you lost your leg?”

  Silence met her question. Then a harsh breath followed by, “Yeah.”

  Again, the need to comfort him curled through her, warming her heart. But he wouldn’t appreciate it, and they didn’t have time for it anyway. So Vivi hardened her heart, made it cold. He was rated to fly them and had flown for pleasure long before the loss of his leg. This was about getting him cleared. Whatever it was about for him, he had to get over it. Quickly.