She glanced back to where she’d last seen Rook, sifting through the darkness but only finding more darkness. Fear tripped through her belly, knocking her heart like a pinball against her ribs. The silence was deafening, not even the shushing fall of snow on top of more snow could be heard.
A twig snapped, and she turned in a circle, searching for the source. Muted footfalls echoed, then complete quiet.
“Turn around, Ms. Bentwood.”
She knew that voice. Had spoken to the man just yesterday, outlining her plans. All except for coming to Warrenton. That she’d told no one except the man in Washington.
She searched the shadows once more, seeing no sign of Rook. They’d not made a contingency plan, though she had no doubt he’d be fine on his own.
Vivi, however, was toast. She raised her hands, knowing before she turned there was a gun held on her.
“Brigadier General Johansen,” she said aloud, hearing her voice echo back to her.
To her left, lights speared the darkness.
“Tell him to come out,” Johansen bit out.
He pushed the barrel of the gun against her cheek.
Johansen had once been a fine-looking man. Nearing fifty, he still had the regal bearing of a soldier, but his face was lined now. Stress and regret carved a map in harsh relief on his handsome features.
“Don’t try me, Ms. Bentwood.”
“I didn’t have you pegged as a traitor, Brigadier General.”
He pressed harder, and Vivi wanted to beg him to remove the gun. The cold of the barrel against her face was like acid.
“I’m no goddamn traitor!” Spittle lined his lips, some of it landing on Vivi’s cheek. Disgust curled through her then. She’d played right into his hands.
“Who’s pulling your strings?” she asked, not bothering to veil her rage. She was shaking. Not with cold but with a volcanic anger.
“Have him come out, Ms. Bentwood,” he said again. In his voice was the promise of something really bad should she not obey.
Vivi had known the price she might pay. Her brother had been worth it. Then she’d looked into Rook Granger’s pitch-black eyes, and he’d become worth it. So Vivi straightened her shoulders, tipped her head back in spite of the gun digging into her cheek and she said two words, “Run, Rook!”
Johansen’s face hardened though his eyes widened in what Vivi imagined was disbelief. She saw his hand rise, felt the barrel of his weapon leave her cheek, heard the sharp report of a weapon discharging, winced as the hot slide of a bullet kissed her neck, and then…darkness.
CHAPTER 6
He’d shot her!
Rage poured through Rook, a superheated frenzy that threatened to snap his hold on sanity. She fell at the man’s feet, a crumpled rag doll, dark hair a shadow on the snow. He almost stepped into the moonlight, lifting his gun and aiming between Johansen’s eyes but something held him back.
He focused on Vivi, watching as two men stepped forward to pick her up by her arms. She groaned, and it was a precious sound against the backdrop of the ocean in the distance. There was a long mark on her neck, and the snow at her feet was dotted with dark stains. His vision hazed the color of her blood.
Then Rook shut down—just gave himself over to the soldier who ruled his mind. He counted five men, all black-ops soldiers by their bearing. One hung back at the tree line, but Rook took in the others’ eyes, memorizing them in a split second, recognizing none but realizing he’d kill them all if Vivi was more than just winged by that shot. Run, she’d said. Goddammit. She’d trusted Johansen, not realizing she shouldn’t have trusted anyone.
He watched them drag her through the snow into General Arbor’s house. He hoped Arbor was still alive. Rook had known when they’d come up on the house that something was off. Arbor had been moving around his kitchen when he’d scoped the place earlier. In the time it had taken him to get back to Vivi then back here, Johansen and his men had shown up.
Vivi had been surprised. Rook hadn’t. The signs were all there—this was too big for the men gunning for him not to have their hand in everything. This type of presence here was proof.
Rook waited, keeping to the darkness and watching as the lone man moved in from the edge of the woods while the rest entered the cabin. He moved like a wraith—in his space one minute, gone the next. Rook had only ever seen one person do it quite like that. And that person was dead. Knight.
Rook headed for the back door of the cabin, plans forming instantly. He’d been trained to plan, execute that plan, and kill. He did them all really well. Anyone who’d touched her had become a target for him.
Rook slowed his breathing, fought the need to get to her, and wasn’t shocked when the man who’d hung back attacked him from the rear. He turned, catching the man with a short right cross to the jaw, then wrapping his arm around his neck.
“Calm the fuck down, Rook.”
Rook froze. The voice belonged to Knight. The man moved like Knight. But Knight was buried in Virginia, a single cross marking the place he’d finally come to rest.
Rook released him, turning him around quickly, striking out and taking him down with a single punch to the solar plexus. He followed him to the ground, his forearm to the other man’s throat and his gun to the man’s forehead.
The moon peeked from behind a cloud, and Rook watched as it revealed a face he’d never expected to see. “What the fuck?”
Knight smiled. “Good to see you, brother.”
Rook pressed harder. “You’re dead.”
“Get that fucking gun outta my face, dude. I’d hate to have to kill you with it,” Jonah Knight said, smile gone, eyes hard.
It still sounded like Knight. That mocking smile looked like Knight. “You’re dead.”
“And you’re a broken fucking record. Look, we don’t have time for this. Johansen will kill both Bentwood and Arbor if we don’t get in there. The men with him are freelance. They’re ready to take off at my signal. Then it will be you, me, Johansen, and maybe some answers.”
“I don’t believe this. How do I know it’s you?” Rook demanded, not lifting up off the gun at all.
“Because it looks like me?” Sarcasm hung in the air, and then Knight’s face blanked but the truth was in his black eyes. “Endgame.”
Rook rolled off his best friend and stood. “Why?” he asked.
Knight stood, brushed off the snow, and looked at the sky. “Had to be done. The truth caught up with me before it did you. But we’ve got a way now to settle this. A way to make it right.”
“There’s no way to make what happened on the side of that fucking mountain two years ago right,” Rook ground out.
Raised voices from inside the cabin had Rook moving. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“She’s important?” Knight asked.
Rook took a deep breath, sifted through his mind for the answer, feeling it notch in his throat. “Yeah.”
“What the fuck, dude? Only you could find a woman in prison,” Knight said caustically.
Rook ignored the bait. He hadn’t found her. She’d found him. “Call those spec-ops boys off, Knight. You make entry first. I’ll tag Johansen, and we’ll play, yeah?”
“On it.” Knight was gone then, a breeze and then nothing.
Rook entered the cabin, checking the shadows and listening. A thud sounded from the area of the den, and then a large black shape entered the kitchen. Rook aimed, the man held up a hand. Rook let him leave the way he’d come in.
Knight had done what he’d said he’d do. Rook pushed the disbelief aside. He and Knight had been a unit for so long that it was easy to fall back into the pattern of trust. The fucker would have questions to answer later, but right now, Rook had no choice but to depend on him.
He entered the den, took in the blood dripping onto the floor beneath Vivi’s chair and then the gun Johansen
had trained on her. Her head was forward, chin touching her chest and her breaths were choppy. Vivi’s eyes were closed, but she winced and he knew then she was aware of what was going on.
“Wake the fuck up, Agent Bentwood,” Johansen yelled as he kicked her chair.
It nearly toppled, but Johansen reached out to steady it and that’s when Rook struck. He shot the gun out of the general’s hand and was on him in the next second.
He punched him in the face, clocked him in the ribs, and turned him over, wrapping both the general’s hands in one of his before he stood him up.
“Ties,” he demanded, and Knight was there.
He used the zip ties to bind Johansen’s hands in front of him before pushing the man to the sofa and forcing him to sit. Blood dripped from his nose and hate burned in his eyes. Rook shrugged and turned to Vivi.
Knight was there, wrapping gauze around her throat. “She’s good. He winged her,” Knight reported.
Arbor roused then, cursing. He’d been hit several times in the face, but his wounds weren’t serious. The general looked pissed. “Johansen, I’ll have your fucking ass in a sling for this,” he spit out, along with some blood, maybe a tooth or two.
Johansen had gone silent.
“Goddammit,” Knight yelled as he rushed to Johansen.
Rook turned and panic rushed through him. Johansen was foaming at the mouth, a single plastic packet falling from his dying hands. He fell over on the sofa, and Rook saw his chances at redemption fading away along with the life in the brigadier general’s eyes.
Cyanide. Goddamn. What was so bad you wanted to kill yourself to keep it from getting out?
“You Delta boys are always in the middle of some serious shit,” Arbor said wearily. “Now untie my ass, soldier.”
Knight did as Arbor requested.
Rook was busy with Vivi. Her eyes were open, but she refused to meet his gaze. “Olivia?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I got shot, Rook,” she said, and a small smile curved those full lips he wanted to spend his life licking and kissing. Fuck that. A lifetime might not be long enough.
“Are you smiling?”
“This makes me a full-fledged field operative now, right?”
He rubbed his eyes and laughed. This was another clusterfuck all the way around. He and Knight could still pump Arbor for information, but their most solid lead, Johansen, had killed himself. And here he was fucking laughing. “Sure, Vivi. Full fledged.”
“Boys,” Arbor said into the silence. “I think it’s time Agent Bentwood was returned home.”
She shook her head as she rubbed her wrists. “Um, hello? All this started because of the research I did. I contacted General Arbor, and I got you out of prison, Rook.”
Her voice wavered. Rook wanted to hold her. There was no time. Rook hardened his softening heart. “You did good, Vivi. You led me to General Arbor, and you’ve given me the deputy director’s name. But this is shit you don’t need to be involved in.”
“I’m in this. They know I’ve been asking questions, delving into files,” she managed to get out in a raspy voice. “You can’t just go after the deputy director of the CIA with no evidence.”
Arbor walked over to her then and got down on his haunches in front of her. “You did good, Agent Bentwood. Go home. You covered your tracks. I can’t believe your brother involved you in this, but you’ve done everything you could. Don’t ruin your life for a fight you weren’t meant for. I’m going to fill these men in on everything you told me, okay? Go back to D.C., live your life, and know that you honored your brother in the very best way possible.”
She nodded, but around her mouth were the lines Rook had begun to associate with stubbornness. “They’ll be searching for Rook. They’ll take him back to Leavenworth. This was supposed to be over in twenty-four hours. We were supposed to verify the truth and let justice prevail.”
Rook rubbed his chest at her forlorn tone.
Arbor shook his head. “Rook won’t be going back to Leavenworth.”
Unspoken communication hovered in the air between him, Arbor, and Knight—Johansen’s unforeseen suicide played into the very large picture.
That day in the Hindu Kush two years ago had been the beginning. But the roots of it all were embedded so deep it would take more than twenty-four hours to unravel it all. He and Knight had taken their unit into those mountains and been forced to fight their way out. Rook thought he’d lost his best friend.
That he hadn’t, that Knight was here, obviously alive and well, told Rook things were murky and ominous. The packet Rook had placed in a safety deposit box in Oklahoma City held the answers. But it was encrypted. He’d taken it off their communications specialist, Private E. R. Coombs, when he’d found his body. Coombs had been shot point-blank when he’d walked into a copse of trees, leaving his unit behind as he ran a subversive mission within their mission.
Who had sent him on that death errand? Who was to be the recipient of that information that now lay hidden in an Oklahoma City bank under an assumed name? Who the fuck wanted to destroy an entire unit two years later because of that information?
It was all on the disk. But he wouldn’t involve Vivi. He refused.
“You need me,” she stated as she lifted her chin. “The information in that safety deposit box you opened two years ago is encrypted. You need me.”
Shock made him cold. Olivia Bentwood was dangerous. Beautiful and dangerous. A deadly combo. Long moments passed, but he finally shook his head. “No.”
“He’s right, Agent Bentwood,” Knight chimed in. “We really need you back inside.”
“You aren’t locking me out of this?” she asked, spearing Rook with her gaze. Warmth replaced the cold from seconds ago.
“No. You’ve done more for me than anyone else. I won’t lock you out of this. But it’ll be need-to-know, Vivi.”
“Endgame is real,” she said firmly.
Arbor raised his hand, demanding silence. “Not now, Agent Bentwood.”
“I know it’s real, Vivi,” Rook said. “The packet I took off Coombs was labeled with a single name—Endgame.”
She raised her gaze to his. It took his breath. “You’ll be safe?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll let me know what you need?” she asked, and a single tear dropped down her cheek.
Knight and Arbor disappeared into another room. Rook was grateful. He went to a knee in front of her then. “I could tell you now what I need, Vivi.”
She cocked her head and stared at him intently. Slowly, she lifted a hand and traced his eyebrows. Her fingers were gossamer silk over his skin. She would unman him with a single touch.
“I’m worried. What if they come after you? Me?”
He raised his hand then, wrapping it around her neck and pulling her to him. “Don’t worry about me. They’ve already tried. They had no idea I’d have a rogue CIA cyber spy on my side. And I’ll be watching out for you. But I need everything you have, and that means you going back in. Arbor will fill me in on this end. But at the first sign of anything off, you tuck tail and use the phone I’m about to give you to call me. Watch your back.”
She nodded and licked her lips.
He took her offer and sank into her heat, twining his tongue with hers, telling her with his actions everything he wanted to say with his words. She tasted of promises he’d denied himself. And sex. She tasted of sex and want and need.
He pulled away when his cock beat at him to take her to the floor and cement her to him with his body. Now wasn’t the time. He needed to get her on her way back to D.C.
“I don’t understand this,” she whispered as she stroked her fingers over her lips now.
“I don’t either. But I’m coming for you, Vivi. You came for me, and I won’t let you go.”
&nb
sp; Rook stroked a thumb over her cheek, letting the softness of her ground the hardness in him.
Her brother was a smart man. Because Rook had been drifting, lost in a sea of desperation and betrayal and then there’d been Vivi. He owed Michael Bentwood and would pay the man back by making sure Vivi was always kept safe.
Rook stood and turned. Knight was there, holding out a sat phone. Rook took it and gave it to Vivi. “Check it,” he said to her while never removing his gaze from Knight.
Knight smiled and shrugged. “I understand.”
“It’s clean,” Vivi said and stood to her feet. To Knight she said, “Do I need stitches?”
“Nah, Johansen was a horrible shot.”
She snorted. “Or a great one.” She averted her gaze from the deceased man on the couch.
“Agent Bentwood?” General Arbor called her name from the doorway. “One of my friends is going to fly you back to wherever that jet of yours came from. I’ll take you back to the airstrip now.”
She nodded and glanced at Rook, then turned.
“Jonah Knight? I traced you to Syria after the transport plane supposedly carrying your body landed in Germany. From there, you were off-grid. When I first started digging, I thought you were in on framing him. When I realized you weren’t, I decided your secrets were your own. You’ll tell him now though. Or I’ll make your life very uncomfortable.”
Rook wanted to grab her and run, take them far away from this insanity. It didn’t even shock him that she’d known Knight was alive.
Knight held up his hands. “Understood.”
She nodded and turned to follow Arbor. Rook wanted to call after her, but when she looked back at him, all he could do was nod.
He’d known her mere hours, but she’d stolen a vital piece of him. It pissed him off but more than that it made him nervous. It wasn’t about Rook alone anymore. She’d taken something from him, but she’d replaced it with something invaluable. Her.
Then she was gone, and by the time the dawn broke the night sky open wide, he knew that Endgame was much more than he’d ever suspected. He knew Coombs had told Knight what was going on, and before Knight had a chance to tell Rook, the game had been in play so he’d had no choice but to disappear, faking his death and sending an empty coffin up the on-ramp to the transpo flight to Germany. He’d been on the plane, but he’d been very much alive, and searching for the ones behind the clusterfuck on the side of that mountain.
Way of the Warrior Page 19
