Opening the door to the room, Carter followed Jordyn in, then shut out the rest of the club. The thumping music dropped in volume by about seventy-five percent, making it a lot easier to hear each other. He pointed to the room’s leather loveseat. “Get comfy, Mistress. Sparks will be a few minutes.”
Jordyn’s brow furrowed slightly, but she sat anyway. She had to be wondering why the submissive hadn’t moved or acknowledged their presence, and why Carter had basically ignored the woman. After Sparks got there, and they dimmed the window so no one could see in, he’d explain it to her. For now, he leaned against the wall next to the window, with his arms crossed over his chest, and eyed the activity out in the playroom. There were politicians, businessmen and women, and agents and supervisors from various alphabet agencies—some working, others just enjoying the lifestyle. There were members of the social elite, and even the thirty-year-old daughter of the vice president. Here, all their identities were safe—the current advertising slogan for Las Vegas also applied to this club. What happened here, stayed here. But that didn’t go for what was discussed that had nothing to do with the BDSM community. Intel was passed here nightly, whether intentionally or not.
The door behind Carter opened and closed, and Sparks flipped a switch on the wall. The window dimmed, but the occupants of the room could still see out. However, they were hidden from everyone else’s view.
Carter waited until Sparks showed him the scrambling device and nodded that they were clear. Stepping over to the submissive still kneeling on the floor, the US spy held out his hand. “All clear, Isobel.”
“About freaking time.” She grinned at him as she accepted his hand up. “How are you, love?”
Kissing her cheek, he answered, “I’ll let you know after we chat. Isobel Shaw, MI6, this is Jordyn Alvarez from Deimos, using the name Dominguez for her cover.”
Jordyn stood and, with every ounce of professionalism, shook the other woman’s outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same here.” Isobel retrieved a glass of wine from a nearby table and took a sip, then her gaze fell onto Carter. “I’m sorry to hear about your agent.”
His eyebrows shot up a notch. It wasn’t a surprise the spy community was already talking about a death among the Deimos operatives, but it appeared the information wasn’t complete. “Agent as in singular?”
Sitting on the loveseat, Sparks glanced back and forth between Carter and Jordyn. “There’s more than one?”
“Three to be exact. Benito, Aldridge, and Aikman.”
Isobel’s jaw dropped while Sparks let out an angry curse. “Holy shit! What the bloody fuck is going on?”
“We were hoping you could help us figure it out. What’s the chatter been like over the past week?”
The two British spies glanced at each other, but it was Sparks who answered Carter’s question. “Word is you have a target on your back, mate.”
His eyes narrowed. “Me specifically or Deimos in general?”
Taking a seat on the arm of the loveseat, Isobel gestured for Jordyn to sit next to Sparks before she spoke. “You specifically. We heard it through channels two nights ago—not sure where the word originated from or if it’s been confirmed, but with three of your agents dead, I would think there was some truth to it. Apparently, you pissed off Emmanuel Diaz.”
Carter froze at the mention of the Colombian drug lord’s name, and he noticed Jordyn did, too. “Fuck me,” he muttered. His recent past was coming back to haunt him, but how?
Jordyn mirrored his thought, her face paler than it had been moments before. “How the hell did he find out?”
“Find out what?” Sparks asked.
Running a hand down his face, Carter paced the small room. “About two years ago, I took out one of his US contacts, who was also distantly related to him. There’s only one person outside of Deimos who knows for certain I did the hit—and he was the one that ordered it. So it can’t be him.” It had happened shortly after Devon Sawyer had met the woman who would become his wife—Kristen Anders. The Trident boys and several other former SEAL Team Four guys had ended up on a hitman’s list because the contact for Emmanuel Diaz’s deceased brother, Ernesto, had turned out to be a US senator. Luis Beltram had been hours away from being announced as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee when it had been discovered by Trident he’d been involved in many dirty dealings with his Colombian cousins. One of the former SEALs had recognized him from a covert mission, and the senator in turn had ordered the hit on all the SEALs who may have been able to make the connection. Three of the seven retired SEALs from the op had been killed before the Trident team had figured it out. Unfortunately, Ian’s goddaughter, Jenn Mullins, had lost both her father—one of the men from Team Four—and mother during the assassinations that’d taken place.
Isobel’s eyes widened as she stared at Carter. “Are you saying someone in Deimos sold you out?”
He stopped in the middle of the room, fury running through his veins. His fist clenched, he fought the compulsion to punch something. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“But-but who?” Jordyn was as shocked as the rest of them. “And why kill the other agents?”
“To make it look like Deimos itself was targeted and not just one operative,” Sparks replied.
Carter nodded in agreement to the British agent’s conclusion. They had a mole in Deimos—and now they had to figure out who it was before anyone else was killed. When Carter found the bastard, he was going to make sure he suffered a very painful death.
* * *
After a few hours of restlessness, Carter woke up exactly where he’d fallen asleep last night—on the couch in his room. Jordyn had needed space, not that she’d asked for it. He was sure her head was still spinning with all she’d seen and heard last night, between the activities in the club and the realization they had a mole in their agency. His head was still spinning. Jordyn had probably felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and he’d opted for the couch last night for several reasons. Any decision she made about exploring the lifestyle had to come without any persuasion from him. If he’d shared a bed with her, he didn’t think he could’ve lain there without pulling her into his arms and playing dirty pool by taking advantage of her body’s reactions to him. And if he’d done that, his Dominant nature would have demanded her submission. All around him, things were spiraling out of control, and sex was at least one area where he could stay in command.
Stretching, he stood and went into the bathroom to use the toilet. The faint thumping of the club music had disappeared hours ago. After finishing the conversation with Sparks and Isobel, Carter had gotten on the floor and did a hundred push-ups. He’d needed to appear flushed and sweaty as if he’d just enjoyed partaking in the threesome. He and Jordyn had then made some more rounds, speaking to a few more of his contacts. However, while some had given him the same intel the others had, no one else had anything to add to it.
His internal clock told him it was about 6:00 a.m. Before they’d gone to sleep last night, he’d sent Brody an encrypted email asking him and the other geek at Trident to start digging into the financials and backgrounds of everyone at Deimos. Right now, the only people he trusted were McDaniel and Jordyn. Deimos was their boss’s baby and he would never do anything to destroy it. As for Jordyn, if she’d wanted to kill him, she would have done the deed herself, instead of using all this subterfuge.
When he walked back into the main room, he noticed his cell phone was blinking, indicating a message had been left. Cracking his neck, he picked up the phone and dialed into his voice mail. He was instantly alert when Joe Underwood’s raspy voice came over the line. “Hey. Um . . . call me as soon as you can. The doctors say we have no choice; Justin needs another transplant.”
Carter’s blood ran cold. “Fuck,” he mumbled. His plans had changed—the Deimos situation was on temporary hold. He needed to fly to California and see the one person in the world he didn’t know if he could be in
the same room with without committing homicide. The only thing that would keep him from doing it was Justin needed the bastard’s organ.
Striding to the small closet in the room, he retrieved some clean clothes and replaced the dirty ones in his go-bag. The latter ones he left on the floor of the closet. He’d send Paul a text later asking the assistant manager to have them cleaned for him.
Behind him, he heard Jordyn moving around in the bed. “What time is it? You’re leaving?”
“We’re leaving.” There was no way he was letting her out of his sight right now—he might be the ultimate target, but whoever had ordered the hit didn’t know he was aware of that. Jordyn and the other agents from the stolen NOC list were still at risk. “Get up and get a move on, sweetheart. We’re out of here in twenty.”
She jumped from the bed, and he ignored the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra under the blue lounge outfit she’d slept in. Hurrying across the room, she began pulling clean clothes out of her duffel bag. “What? Why? Where are we going?”
“California. Something I have to take care of,” he said as he strode toward the bathroom again.
Jordyn’s jaw dropped as she stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Something personal—I’ll fill you in later.” Saying nothing more, he closed the door and turned on the shower. He hadn’t wanted to shut her out, but there would be plenty of time to explain it all once there were in the air.
Twenty-five minutes later, they were climbing into the SUV. While Jordyn had taken her own shower, he’d called Joe to let him know he’d received the message and was heading to California. Justin was stabilized for now, but he had tubes coming out of him and machines helping his kidneys work. Carter spoke to Vicki for a few minutes to reassure her he would take care of everything. Then he’d made a call to one of his many contacts and arranged for a private jet to fly Jordyn and him out of a small airport in Virginia. They couldn’t fly commercial with their weapons, and with someone targeting both of them, they couldn’t go anywhere without them.
“Are you at least going to tell me where in California we’re going?” Jordyn asked as he pulled out of the parking garage into the early morning D.C. traffic. “It’s a big state you know.”
“Sacramento.” He really wasn’t in the mood to talk, his mind focused on what he was about to do. His stomach churned and he still had at least five hours before he came face to face with the devil. “Look, we’ll talk later, I promise. Just give me some time to deal with what’s in my head first, okay?”
He reached over and squeezed her hand, faintly pleased when she didn’t pull away from him. She stared at him for a moment or two, then nodded her head. “Okay. Later is fine. Have you checked in with McDaniel yet this morning?”
“No, but I have to talk to him about this trip anyway, so I’ll call from the plane. If you need something to do, why don’t you call Reardon or whoever’s working the comms desk and see if they have any updates for us.”
“On one condition.” He raised an eyebrow at her in question, and she pointed at a bagel place coming up on their right. “Feed me, Truman.”
A chuckle escaped him—the first one all morning. “Truman? Seriously? No, definitely not Truman.”
“All right, not Truman, but I still want you to feed me.”
“Yes, Mistress Jordyn.” He pulled into a parking space in front of the shop.
She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Stuff it where the sun don’t shine, asshole.”
“With pleasure, sweet Jordy.” He waggled his eyes at her. “With pleasure.”
This banter was what he really missed when it came to her, and he hadn’t realized how much until now. They’d flirted and busted each other’s chops a lot during her training and the few months following that. Maybe once all the shit storms had been taken care of, he could convince Jordyn to give him and his lifestyle a try.
* * *
As soon as the jet leveled off at cruising altitude, Carter undid his seat belt, stood, and pulled out his phone. Jordyn watched as he paced the length of the cabin, dialing a number and waiting for the call to be picked up. When it was, she listened to his half of the conversation.
“It’s Carter. Jordyn and I are on our way to Sacramento. Justin’s in the hospital. That favor I told you I might need at some point? It’s time. I need you to clear my way into the penitentiary to see the bastard . . . I know it’s a fucking bad time, Gene.”
At least Jordyn now knew who he was talking to, even if she had no idea what he was talking about. His nephew is in the hospital? What does that have to do with someone in prison?
“I don’t care; get me in there . . . Yeah . . . Uh huh . . . Make sure it’s a room with no cameras or mics. Three chairs, one table, nothing more. I’ll arrange the rest . . . Yeah . . . We’ve got some intel for you, but not over this phone. I’ll call you from a secure line from California. In the meantime, I have my contacts doing some digging . . . Right . . . I’ll call you when we land.”
He disconnected the call and then tossed the phone onto a low table in front of the couch Jordyn was sitting on. Taking a deep breath, he brought both hands up and ran them down his face.
Something inside Jordyn hurt for him. Clearly, he was facing something that scared him, and wasn’t that a kick? She’d never known big, bad Carter to be scared of anything—the man was as tough and confident as they came. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him all those years ago. Things had changed in the past few days—her seemingly unjustified hatred toward him had faded as other feelings took its place. Feelings she didn’t know what to do with.
Wanting to comfort him, Jordyn patted the open space on the couch next to her. “Come here, Double-O. Tell me what’s going on.”
The corners of his mouth ticked upward at the nickname she hadn’t called him in years. He flopped onto the couch, his shoulder brushing against hers. “Where to begin?”
Jordyn turned sideways to face him, bringing her knee up onto the couch and resting it against his muscular thigh. “How about at the beginning?”
“Ha! Smartass. Right. The beginning.” Lifting his chin, he rested the back of his head on the couch’s cushions and stared up at the ceiling of the jet. “We’ve never talked about our pasts prior to Deimos, have we?” She didn’t answer him since it was a rhetorical question. “I spent twelve years in foster homes after my birth mother decided to abandon me in a Walmart north of San Diego. I was six years old at the time.”
Jordyn gasped and unknowingly placed her hand on his thigh. “Six! Oh my God, how could she do that?”
Shrugging, he glanced at her hand and then laid his on top of it. “From what I understand, she had mental problems on top of drug use. I was eleven or twelve when the police came to one of my foster homes to let me know she’d been found dead in a homeless camp in the woods somewhere. There isn’t too much I remember about her, but . . . anyway, I was shuffled from home to home—some abusive, others neglectful—until I ended up at the Osbourne’s when I was fifteen. I stayed with them until I enlisted on my eighteenth birthday—the Marine Corps.”
As he spoke, Jordyn realized there was so much about this man she’d never known. Part of her wanted to know everything, while the other part was terrified that if she did, she might come to care for him—possibly even fall in love with him. And she couldn’t allow that to happen. Their jobs, his lifestyle, and so much more stood between them. But despite her fear, she let him continue.
“That’s where I met Vicki. She came about a year after I was living there. Her parents were killed in a car accident a few years earlier, and there was no family to take her in. She . . .” He snorted. “She was a hoot. Smart. Cute. Funny. I knew it was stupid to get close to anyone when there was always a chance I’d get moved to another home, but Vicki became the kid sister I never had. I decided to go into the military—not only for a better life for me, but for her as well. Once the foster kids hit eighteen, the Osbournes kicked them out; they
were only interested in the state stipend for fostering which dried up as soon as the kids became adults. I wanted to help Vicki go to college. I wanted her to have a good life so badly, I even put her as my beneficiary in case anything happened to me.”
Carter shut his eyes and fell into the past. “The day I graduated from boot camp, I hitchhiked the hour’s drive to go see her. I was going to be shipping out to Hawaii on my first assignment three days later. When I got there, Marion Osbourne wasn’t home, but Roland was. I . . . shit . . . I walked in on him raping Vicki.”
“Oh, God!” Jordyn squeezed his leg as her other hand went to cover her mouth in shock.
“I honestly don’t remember much that happened before the cops pulled me off of him. Apparently, the neighbors had heard all the yelling and screaming and called 911. I had beaten him within an inch of his life—probably would have killed him if a patrol car hadn’t been a block or two away when the call came in. Next thing I knew, I was in an interrogation room at the police station, with bloody hands, looking at a prison term. But the cops left me there; no one came to interrogate me or get my side of the story. What I didn’t know was I’d already been on McDaniel’s radar for his new agency—my recruiter had passed my name on to him, then my drill instructors had kept an eye on me for him. No family. Street smart. Picked things up quickly. Excelled in firearms and hand-to-hand in boot camp without any prior training.”
“Ideal for black ops,” Jordyn said, stating the obvious.
“Exactly.” His eyes were still closed. “After being alerted by my fingerprints being put into AFIS, McDaniel showed up at the station and gave me the same two options you’d been given—jail or Deimos. I told him I’d sign my life over to him on two conditions. One—Vicki was placed in the Witness Protection Program, given the help she needed to deal with the rape, and her college education was paid for. And two—Roland Osbourne never stepped foot out of jail ever again.”
Absolving His Sins: Trident Security Book 7 Page 14
