by Edie Harris
Gripping the strap of Adam’s abandoned bag in one hand, he exited the alley and pulled out his phone. But before he could dial Tobias, a surprised feminine voice called out to him. “Casey?”
He paused, turning, and caught sight of a tall blonde woman obviously on her way to the bar scene a few blocks over, a group of equally dressed-up women gaggling around her on the sidewalk. “Hey, Sara.” For a week or two a while back, they’d hooked up. Casual, easy, a non-demanding interlude of physical catharsis. “How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been good.” Sara sauntered closer after giving her girlfriends the signal to wait. Her smile was pretty, friendly. “You look great.”
“So do you.” And she did. Model-slim and in her early thirties, Sara carried herself with poise and confidence, a confidence that had led her to approach Casey in a Boston bar nearly a year ago. He’d liked her confidence, and hadn’t been threatened by the possibility that he might end up having deeper feelings for her, so he’d rolled with her flirting and enjoyed their time between the sheets.
But he could tell by the gleam in her blue eyes now that she was ready and willing to pick up that flirting right where they’d left off, and tonight was...not the night for that. Even if his brother hadn’t just been kidnapped, it wouldn’t have been the right night for it—the demons had been nipping at his heels lately, invading his dreams, and that meant he wasn’t fit company for anyone, not on an intimate level. “I’m sorry,” he said with a regretful shake of his head, though regret wasn’t what he was feeling, no matter that Sara was a perfectly nice woman. “I wish I had time to talk, but I’ve got a family thing.” He softened the apology with a half smile, relieved when she shrugged, her smile not faltering.
“No big deal. You’ve got my number.” She shifted back in step with the other women. “Call me sometime.” Sara and her friends moved along down the sidewalk, deeper into the heart of Haymarket, and any guilt Casey may have felt about shutting her down disappeared. A woman as great as Sara would never want for male attention, and she could do a helluva lot better than him, that was for damn sure.
Heading in the opposite direction, he pulled up Tobias’s number, not caring that it was one in the morning in London.
Tobias answered on the third ring. “Casey.” That was it—no chastisement, no frustration, just his cool voice ready to handle whatever new problem was thrown his way.
And Casey found himself at a loss for words. He didn’t know how to tell his brother about Adam. Didn’t know how to confess that another of their siblings had been targeted and harmed. After what Beth had been through a few months ago, and the danger Tobias himself had faced at the hands of the Russian mob, Casey knew they were all ready for things to be calm for a while. “Tobias,” he began, but his voice cracked, croaked.
Immediately, Tobias went on the alert. “What’s wrong?”
“Adam. He’s been taken.” Quickly recounting the known details and the steps he’d already taken, he unlocked his vehicle and locked himself in, shoving the key into the ignition and peeling away from the curb, heading for home.
Bluetooth kicked in and Tobias’s tense tones filled the interior of the Jeep. “We meet at Beth’s, then. You need Della to get inside the hardware Adam left behind.”
“Family meeting?” Family was the five of them, their core unit, and now that the unit was missing a key member, a meeting was a necessity.
“Yes,” Tobias agreed tightly. “We get Gillian on a secure video link, and then...”
The fine hairs on Casey’s forearms rose. “Then what?”
A controlled exhalation from the other end of the line. “Then I tell you what I had Adam investigating, off the books.”
Anger flashed, ping-ponging between Casey’s temples before he breathed through the rush of emotion. He knew better than to loosen the white-knuckled fist he kept clenched around the more violent of his feelings, not when his dark days outnumbered the light as of late. Plus, he couldn’t afford to be mad at Tobias. “You had him working on something and didn’t loop me in?” Well, would you look at that—some of the mad seeped through anyway.
“I’m not discussing it over the phone, Casey. But I promise you’ll hear it all when we get to Chicago.”
We. “Chandler’s coming?” Chandler McCallister, the formerly disavowed British spy who had double-oh-seven’d her way into Tobias’s heart this spring. Tobias had recently bought a flat in the city and planned to make the UK his home base, in order to be with her. Casey had been on the fence about the tiny blonde dynamo, but after the shit that went down in Russia and learning how bravely—and ingeniously—she’d saved Tobias’s life from a truly terrifying Moscow mobster, he had mad respect for his brother’s beloved. Putting her in the same room as Beth, however... “Has she talked to Beth or Vick since the, uh, incident?”
“No, but it has to happen sometime, and Adam’s kidnapping means ‘sometime’ has arrived.” His brother’s statement was harsh and unforgiving. “Faradays are being hunted, Casey. We won’t survive infighting.”
That was the truth. “The plane’s here, so you two are on your own getting to Chicago.”
“We’ll manage. I’ll send you the details when I have them.” There was a pause. “Casey?”
Yeah. He understood the rage in Tobias’s voice, all too well. “We get Adam back, and then we do the hunting.” The call disconnected with a press of a button on the steering wheel, Casey’s fingers flexing as he sped out of the city. He tried to remember the breathing exercises he’d been taught, the ones that were supposed to help him manage the more high-strung of his emotions, but more often than not the exercises failed.
Casey was a high-strung kind of guy, always had been. Some diaphragmatic breathing wasn’t going to change that.
A quick call to the pilot was next, the jet needing to be ready within the hour, and he hung up as he approached the Faraday property line. Waving to the security guard, he drove through the open gate, up the winding drive that extended nearly half a mile onto Faraday land. The compound, as it had been called for generations, housed not only the original eighteenth-century Faraday homestead, but also a large converted warehouse, a tricked-out barracks-style dormitory, two centuries-old barns—one in good repair, one decrepit—one multilevel garage, two cottages, two cabins, a state-of-the-art recreation facility complete with climbing wall, lounge and movie theater and lap pool, and the Queen Anne Victorian mansion in which Casey had been raised. Technically, one of the cabins was his to use, but lately, whenever he’d been stateside, he’d found himself crashing in his childhood bedroom.
He ditched his vehicle in the garage, pausing to request a ride from the family chauffeur in fifteen minutes’ time, and hauled ass to the house, heading straight for his bedroom on the second floor. He’d long ago taken down the movie posters for Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China, and other Kurt Russell flicks that had decorated his walls when he was a kid. No trophies on display, no athletics awards, because Casey hadn’t participated in any team sports other than the casual pick-ups played by Faraday employees on the secured compound. Part and parcel of being homeschooled, he supposed, but the lack of camaraderie, the lack of a tangible physical outlet had made him incredibly eager once he turned eighteen and enlisted.
He’d been so ready to be a team player and leave the farm team for the big leagues. He hadn’t realized until later that Faraday Industries was the majors, just utilizing a different playbook.
Hauling a duffel from the closet, he tossed in a spare set of boots, a weapons kit from under the bed, the travel toiletries bag he kept atop the dresser, and a week’s worth of boxer-briefs, socks and shirts. Cargo pants and an extra belt joined the gear, and then, quickly, he tucked Adam’s messenger bag with the broken tech inside before situating an all-weather jacket and baseball cap over top and obscuring an immediate visual, if someone peeked inside. Someone like—
“Where’s the fire?”
Ignoring the faint tension that particular voic
e instilled in him, Casey turned to face his father. “Hey, Dad.”
Frank Faraday, the figurehead CEO of Faraday Industries, sat in his electric wheelchair at the door to Casey’s room, his line-worn face looking as displeased as usual. In the decade-plus since his multiple sclerosis diagnosis, Frank’s stocky frame had lost much of its formerly muscled mass, his blond hair now completely gray and his blue eyes muted by the pain he lived with on a daily basis. The once-imposing patriarch’s legs had lost most of their functionality only in recent years, relegating him to the chair his children knew he hated.
There was no set expiration date for Frank, not that they’d been told, but his deterioration had been swift of late, though noticeable only to the few people the older man still permitted within his orbit. That circle grew smaller every day, but Casey found he didn’t have the heart to challenge Frank, to demand he not shut out those who cared for him. The grouchy old man was a pill, undeniably so. “I said, where’s the fire?”
Case in point. “No fire.” He fought to keep his tone neutral as he stuck to the narrative he and Tobias had agreed upon. “I’m heading to Chicago, gonna give Vick some oversight. Spend time with Bethie.” Tossing in one last shirt, he zipped the duffel closed, placing one hand atop it as he waited, waited—
“It was my idea to open a satellite office in Chicago, you know. I should be the one checking up on Elisabeth and her...man-friend.”
Yup. There it was. “Fiancé. Vick is her fiancé.” The news of their announcement, brimming with quiet happiness, had come a couple of weeks ago, shortly after Beth and Vick had moved into their new house. It might seem as though things were moving quickly between the two of them, but Casey knew better. Time was irrelevant when you were with the right person, and those two were definitely each other’s right person. “And no one’s saying you can’t check on the new office. But you do know Beth’s not working it, right? This is all Vick’s show.”
“I know, I know,” Frank grumbled. “She’ll come back to us eventually.”
Casey bit his tongue to forestall his argument. Beth had already come back to the family, just not to the business, and there was a difference—a difference Casey and the rest of the family were happy with. Frank’s happiness, however, was a foreign, fleeting thing. “Do you wanna come along or not?”
Scowling, Frank’s hand clenched atop the steering mechanism embedded in the right arm of the chair. “Not. Can’t just drop everything and hop a plane anymore, can I?” Bitterness threaded through the gruff words, and Casey fought the wave of pity that threatened. Frank’s pissy attitude had been around far longer than his illness, something it behooved all his children to remember.
Clearing his throat, Casey shouldered the duffel and walked to the door, meeting his father’s gaze dead-on. “Look, you don’t have to say it, but I know you signed off on a Chicago office and put Raleigh Vick in charge for Beth’s sake. You want her to feel safe in the city she loves, with the man she loves. You did this for her.” He knew the begrudging gift Frank had given Beth with what they now termed Faraday Chicago, but Beth, still healing from her scars, might not recognize precisely what it was their father had done. Not when such generosity was a rarity.
For a long moment, Frank said nothing. “Family first, Casey. Family first.” Then he nudged the chair backward with a flick of his fingers, retreating down the hallway until he disappeared around the corner.
With a shake of his head, Casey turned in the opposite direction, heading for his mother’s second-floor office, hoping to say goodbye to Sofia before hitting the road, but she was nowhere to be found. After scribbling a note to her—Going to see Bethie. Will give her your love. xo C—he hustled down the stairs and out the front door, where a black sedan waited just beyond the steps of the sprawling front porch, idling in the circle drive.
Tossing his duffel onto the back seat next to him, he nodded to his parents’ driver, and minutes later the car had passed through the security gate at the edge of the compound, heading toward the nearby private airstrip where Captain Okumura waited with the company jet. Tobias probably hated that he’d have to charter a flight, but so what? It wasn’t like Casey could bring the gear he needed onto a commercial plane. Scan him—or his luggage—and TSA would get real concerned, real fast.
With a heavy exhalation, he pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the messages waiting for him. A note from Finn saying he’d groveled at Jaime Redding’s feet and they’d have red-light cam footage within the next two hours. A text from Henry confirming that Finn had, in fact, done said groveling. Tobias’s ETA in Chicago. A shit-ton of memos from Casey’s executive assistant reminding him that he had a full schedule this week of outfitting his team in new body armor, field-testing some of Gillian’s latest firearms and the dreaded quarterly psych evals.
Casey hadn’t always dreaded those sessions. Ten years ago, he’d been twenty-four, debating how long he might stay with the Army before transitioning fully into the family business, tempted by the recruitment offers he’d received from the CIA and completely unconcerned about the state of his mind. Initially instituted to protect Beth when she first started taking on wetwork assignments, evaluations with the on-staff psychiatrist became de rigueur for any and all active field operatives.
But after coming back from Colombia four years earlier...yeah, he wasn’t exactly a fan of someone digging around his psyche anymore. He faked it, plain and simple. He pretended things were A-okay, said all the right things and just enough of the wrong things to avert major suspicion that he was feeding the shrink a line. But things weren’t okay, not really. Not even close.
Glancing down again, he realized he’d tapped open the photo app on his phone—and not only that, but navigated his way into the private album he kept dragged to the bottom of the list, only looking at it in his darkest moments.
There had been a lot of darkest moments lately.
His thumb hovered over the image filling his screen. A round face with golden-brown skin, flushed cheeks and the widest, whitest smile he’d ever seen. Untamed curls falling riotously over slim shoulders, her hand lifted in front of her, palm out, as if to ward off the camera. Big brown eyes, so dark a man could get lost in their depths, stared back at him, lifting at the corners in the faintest of crinkles as she laughed at the photographer. At him.
Ilda Almeida had been the most beautiful individual Casey had ever met, inside and out. And she was dead, leaving him a secret widower and unable to tell a damn soul how her loss made him ache on the insides of his bones.
He turned off the phone. Fucking demons.
Chapter Two
Chicago
Tobias took the teacup and saucer his brother-in-law-to-be, Raleigh Vick, offered him, nodding his thanks as he leaned back in the leather club chair. Thankfully, the contents of the delicate porcelain weren’t tea but coffee, with enough of a kick to rev Tobias’s brain into high speed.
His fiancée was handed tea, however. The British were weird.
Chandler McCallister didn’t take a seat as she sipped her morning beverage, standing tense and alert next to him. Her hip brushed his shoulder, and the warmth from that contact worked better than any caffeine burst. Settling his saucer on the clouded glass side table at his left, he shifted to grip the back of Chandler’s thigh, his fingers slipping over the slick stretch fabric of her black jodhpur pants. He stroked the subtle seam running the length of her inner thigh, not saying a word, because they were being watched.
Not overtly, of course, but Tobias was aware of every cautious glance directed their way. Unsurprising, seeing as this was the first time Chandler had been in this particular group’s company since the February night Beth was taken and subsequently tortured, nearly to death. Since then, Chandler had proven not to be the evil accomplice the Faradays had initially believed her, but the tension lingered.
Still, she was the woman Tobias loved, the woman he needed to get through each day, and he and his siblings were going to have to get o
ver this uncomfortable hurdle, sooner or later.
The situation with Adam necessitated the former.
Beth lounged on the couch across from Tobias’s seat, her hands wrapped around a giant mug of steaming coffee. Her short dark hair was growing out quickly, he noted, curling around her ears and brushing her forehead. Her head had been shaved during her ordeal, and Tobias—and the rest of the family—was relieved to see one of the most obvious outward signs of trauma fading. The scars on her arms, pale pink against the dusky gold of her natural skin tone, were also fading, more slowly than any of them would like, similar to the marks on her calves. Marks the entire room could see because of the sleeveless navy sheath dress she wore.
It was a deliberate outfit choice, Tobias knew, and though his heart hurt—for Beth, for Chandler—he understood. His sister wanted his lover to see the damage inflicted by John Nash, Chandler’s former MI6 partner, wanted Chandler to know she was strong enough to not only survive that torment but to thrive in its wake. That dress was a pointed message: I won.
But Beth’s weren’t the only pair of eyes on them. On the large flat-screen mounted over the living room fireplace, his other sister, Gillian, stared at the gathering with avid interest. It was early in San Diego, before sunrise, but Gillian had an energy drink in hand, her hair in a messy knot at the crown of her head, black-framed glasses adding angles to her rounded face. The head of weapons development for Faraday Industries looked to be in her home office—for once, thank goodness. Much like the rest of their clan, the brilliant thirty-year-old engineer was a workaholic.
A few minutes ago, Casey had clomped down the stairs from the guest bedroom he’d crashed in for a few hours after arriving at Beth and Vick’s two-story home in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago late last night. Now he had a coffee in his hand, pacing from one end of the open-plan kitchen and living area to the other. He’d settled a bag—Adam’s bag—on the island counter in front of their cousin, Della Quinn, before shoving a doughnut into his mouth from a box labeled Glazed & Infused sitting near the coffeepot.
