by Edie Harris
Chandler McCallister lifted a jacket-clad shoulder in a careless shrug. “Not my fault she stepped in front of you.” A short, athletic-looking blonde, the MI6 agent eyed him speculatively. “Honestly, I thought you’d be angrier over Nash here putting a bullet in your gut, then leaving you to bleed out in your bathtub.”
The man in question, a nondescript agent in his early forties, leaned against the rough brick. His steady exhalations clouded the cold air. “Didn’t hit anything vital, and it did the trick—got the little girl running over quick as you please to save his lazy arse. Jolly Rolly’s fine, aren’t you, mate?” John Nash grinned, knowing the degree to which Vick hated that nickname, bequeathed unto him by Nash during their early days in the Service.
“Fine,” Vick agreed lightly, though inside he felt anything but casual. The heavy knowledge of the game Section T-16 was playing with Beth and the Faraday family weighed on his chest like cinderblocks. Toss him in a shallow pool and he’d drown for sure. “I take it you’re responsible for the mess upstairs?”
Nash ambled forward, hands tucked into the front pockets of faded black jeans. “You know me, Jolly. I’m aces at mucking shit up.”
Yeah, Vick knew, all right. He and Nash and McCallister had been working as an active field-team unit for the past five or six years, and during that time, Vick noted his partners’ bad habits. As he felt certain they had taken stock of his. For instance, McCallister remained one of the few T-16 agents who maintained ties with her family, thick as thieves with her twin sister, an interior designer for London’s aristocratic set.
Nash didn’t have any family, far as Vick could tell, but the older man possessed...destructive tendencies. When those tendencies manifested, the bodies their team sent to the morgue tended to carry more damage than the usual. Spies being spies, Vick had never felt the need to report Nash’s behavior. Individuals such as Nash held a special place in Intelligence circles—no one could make a mark spill secrets quite like him.
A flash of memory struck—Beth’s palm covered in blood as she lifted it away from her arm beneath the El platform. Vick shoved his gloved fists into his pockets. “Tell me your flights are already booked.”
“We take off in a couple of hours.” McCallister stepped closer, dropping her voice to a hushed whisper. “Now you tell us. Are you on schedule?”
His knuckles began to ache, so he forced himself to relax his hands, flexing each finger one by one. “I’ll have a Faraday on a plane to London by tonight. No guarantees as to which Faraday, however.”
McCallister shrugged. “Management’s not going to be picky, so long as they get what they want when all’s said and done.”
Nash’s booted feet crunched noisily against the snow as he circled Vick and McCallister to stare up the alley toward where Beth stood, just out of sight at the front of the house. “I dunno, mate. Think it might have more impact to get the girl pleading for her life in front of the boss.”
Gritting his teeth against the urge to deliver a staggering right hook to Nash’s clean-shaven jaw, Vick bit out, “Faradays have minds of their own. I can’t make them do anything without a reveal of intent, and that’ll blow the op.”
Nash’s dark gaze slid over him, assessing and, if Vick wasn’t mistaken, calculating. “Guess you’ll just have to be persuasive.”
Checking the watch at her wrist, McCallister nodded to Nash. “We need to go.” To Vick she said, “Check in the minute you’ve got her on a plane. Then clean up whatever needs doing here and come home. We’ve got work to do.”
Her. McCallister had said her. Nausea settled in the pit of his stomach, causing his wound to throb. “I will.”
As Nash and McCallister turned to leave, Vick froze. He wouldn’t swear to it, but he thought he saw Beth cross the mouth of the alley and glance their way before disappearing in front of the house again.
Shit.
Chapter Eleven
“Hey.”
For the first time, Beth looked at Vick and saw a spy. Blank expression, dead eyes. A cold mask shielding the man beneath. She shivered in apprehension. “Hey. Anything wrong?”
“Some fresh footprints in the snow behind your building and the one next door, but other than that it looks clear.” His hands were shoved in his coat pockets, a stance she wasn’t used to seeing from him. Typically, Vick moved like a hunter, keeping his limbs loose and ready.
She said it already, but it bore repeating. Something was up. “So...in we go?” Though her feet were screaming bloody murder after the mad dash through the Loop—not that she’d ever admit as much—she dreaded seeing whatever havoc had been wreaked upon her home. The violation of her safe space, the nest she had taken such pains to protect, sickened her stomach.
A tense moment passed before the blankness faded from his features, replaced by tenderness. Recognizing how the scene upstairs would no doubt shake her. He took her hand, linking their gloved fingers. “In we go,” he echoed quietly, and together they took the stairs. The door to her apartment stood slightly ajar, the low murmur of male voices coming from within. She paused, listening for Tobias’s familiar cadence before releasing her grip on Vick to step inside.
Sudden quiet descended as three heads swiveled in their direction. Vick stood silently, a wall of iron at her back, ready to shove her behind him at first hint of a threat. He would protect her, even against her brother if it came to that, not realizing she and Tobias had reached a détente, and more, but there simply wasn’t time to discuss the morning’s breakthrough in their relationship.
Vick cleared his throat. “Faraday.”
Tobias nodded, motioning them deeper into the apartment, but Beth’s feet were frozen in place, her gaze having landed on the chaos behind them. Dining chairs overturned, window blinds slashed, knickknacks and artwork and pillows smashed, stripped and shredded. The area rug had been kicked to the side, the bulbs in every lamp shattered. Books had been thrown from their shelves, dumped to the floor, in some cases with pages ripped violently free and strewn about the front room like sad confetti. A glance at her underutilized kitchen showed every drawer yanked open, some even completely separated from the cabinetry. Broken dishes pebbled the hardwood floor. The contents of her fridge—mostly carryout leftovers—had been dumped atop her counters.
A glint of metal proved to be a butcher knife stabbed through one of the open upper cabinet doors. The wood on the inside had splintered and crumbled as a result of the force with which the knife had been slammed into the outer panel.
That kind of aggression... Thank goodness I don’t have Waffles the Imaginary Dog, after all. Her breath rattled in her chest, corners of her eyes stinging wildly with repressed, rage-filled tears.
Vick’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Beth?”
Shaking him off, she ordered herself to breathe, choosing to focus instead on the strange men watching her. With shiny brass shields on their belts and radios clipped to coat lapels, the two were obviously detectives with the Chicago Police Department. “You seem a little fancy for a simple B and E.”
Because fancy they were. Both were over six feet, wearing suits under their winter coats, but only the man on the right wore a tie. His face was stern but attractive, his skin a deep mahogany complemented by rich coffee irises, a neat beard trimmed close to his strong jaw. His partner, sans tie, was astonishingly handsome, with a ready smile, bright whiskey-colored eyes, and a full head of windswept black hair positively begging for a woman to run her fingers through it.
The Tie spoke first. “We’re with the CPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Division. My name is Detective Harding. This is Detective Rossi.” He indicated Pretty Boy with a tilt of his head, his voice a smooth baritone that set her immediately at ease.
Some of the tension left her as she stepped closer, allowing the spy at her back to stand by her side. “I’m B
eth.” She waved at Vick, remembering too late how he’d greeted Tobias with his real accent. Not playing at being Preston Barnes, then. Crap. “This is—”
“Wendell Martin,” Vick interjected smoothly, a definite chill in his voice as he extended a hand to the detectives, the spy she barely recognized as hers once more in command of his responses. They shook, and Vick adopted an expression Beth could only describe as Fake Concerned Citizen. “What happened here?”
Tobias shook his head. “They know.”
Stiffening beside her, Vick warily eyed Harding and Rossi. “What, precisely, do they know?”
Her brother matched him word for icy word. “They know Beth Bernard is an alias for Elisabeth Faraday, and have since her relocation to Chicago. They know we have a...situation concerning Beth’s safety.”
“Hang on a sec.” Beth shrugged out of her winter wear, setting the coat, gloves and purse on an undamaged corner of the dining table, buying time to process. “What do you mean, they’ve known who I was since I moved here?” That irked. Adam’s cover identities were flawless works of art, from the physical documentation to the digital footprint. No one had ever cracked an alias her little brother created.
“Faraday Industries has a connection to the Chicago police. At the time, we thought it best to call in a favor, so that if anything happened to you, there’d be people on the scene who knew what questions to ask and who to contact in an emergency.” Tobias shifted, and she suddenly noticed the faint bulk of a shoulder holster beneath his unbuttoned suit jacket. “This qualifies as an emergency.”
Her gaze flitted from Tobias, who had a distinct distaste for carrying firearms in public, to Harding and Rossi, both with Glocks at their hips. She knew Vick had the Ruger from last night strapped to his ankle. All the while, her Beretta sat primly in her purse, all genteel and ladylike. Ugh.
Her palm itched, ire growing by the second. “I am surrounded by dudes with guns. This is like that bad dream I have when I eat frozen cookie dough right before going to bed.”
A familiar chuckle sounded from beyond the group of men, coming from the direction of the hallway. So familiar it stopped her heart. “Gavin?”
Brawny shoulders hiked up around his ears, her former partner sauntered cautiously forward, his normal swagger nowhere to be seen. “Hiya, B.”
Another blow to her chest as she realized rugged, tough-as-nails Gavin Bok worried over her reaction to his presence. After the events in Kabul and her drop-it-like-it’s-hot routine once they’d made it stateside again, she understood. She’d never said goodbye, never told him where she was going. Never checked in to see how he had handled witnessing the violent deaths of those little girls. “Gavin,” she said again, and launched herself into his arms.
In stilettos, she had an inch or two on him, but he was a powerfully built man, outweighing her by at least fifty pounds, with a wide chest and arms designed for crushing the life out of someone. Those arms now held her, careful but unyielding, his face buried in the crook of her neck.
His heavy sigh shuddered against her, so she gripped him tighter. “Hey. Hey, stranger.” Rubbing a hand over his upper back, she waited for her dear friend to end the hug before drawing away. “Why are you here?”
“Harding and I were Navy boys together.” Gavin indicated the tall black man with a nod. “Served two tours before going our separate ways.”
The connection Tobias had mentioned immediately made sense—Gavin to Harding, still looking out for her even though she’d left him without so much as a farewell. “So this is a social visit to Chicago?” An unlikely coincidence considering the confluence of events.
Harding answered before Gavin had the chance. “You could say that, but there’s always at least a little business involved between us, given what we do for a living.” Pushing back his open trench coat, the detective settled his hands on lean hips. “Police work is like politics. It’s all who you know. Lucky for me, I know Bok here, and he owes me one or two.”
“One. I owe you one.”
It was Rossi who officially confirmed Beth’s suspicions. “Bok’s here because of his ties to Polnoch’ Pulya.”
Beth turned to Gavin. “Ties? To the Midnight Bullet?” Polnoch’ Pulya, otherwise known as the Midnight Bullet, was the Russian black-market arms ring headed by Karlin Kedrov up until a year ago, before he’d died in the explosion in Kabul.
Gavin shrugged, expression closed. “Long story.”
“There’s been evidence over the past few months that the Russian Mob here in Chicago has been trying to circumvent the Outfit,” Rossi continued, his voice holding the echo of a sultry accent, the lyricism hinting at his Latin heritage. “They want to cut out the middle man, make deals on their own without paying the Outfit their fee.”
The Outfit—better known as the Chicago Outfit, the city’s very own deadly mafia—had been the corrupt power in this city for over a century, and any less-than-legal organization knew better than to cross them. Bypassing the Outfit, cutting them out of not only money but communication, was akin to painting a bull’s-eye on your back, just begging for a world of particularly vicious, Chicago-style hurt.
Beth had witnessed that hurt on an early job, during the FBI investigation called Operation Family Secrets, which had eventually resulted in the indictment of fourteen members of the Outfit under the RICO Act. Faraday Industries had been contracted by an Illinois congressman to extract two of his people from the Outfit’s hold, and Beth had tagged along to set up shop as the team’s sniper—more for the just-in-case scenario than anything else. Luckily, she hadn’t needed to take a single shot during the entire mission.
But what she’d witnessed through her scope had raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. “I’m assuming Polnoch’ Pulya is the driving force behind the Russian Mob’s new idiot business practice, then?”
Rossi beamed, golden gaze sweeping her from head to toe. “Oh, you are a quick one.”
For the first time in what felt like years, Beth cracked a smile, helpless against that Cheshire grin of his. “You have no idea, Detective.”
Vick cleared his throat. “You were saying?” he prompted Rossi, blue eyes as frosty as his tone. Beth bit her lip to keep from smiling as secret warmth spilled through her chest.
Arching a sleek brow, Rossi folded his arms over his chest. “I transferred from Organized Crime to Counterterrorism three weeks ago. Before that, I was embedded undercover in a local gang, Lobos Rojos, that we know is almost entirely funded out of Colombia. Specifically, by one of FARC’s leaders, Pipe Marin.”
Pipe Marin, otherwise known as Felipe Marin Donado—and the narco-terrorist who had captured and tortured Vick in the northern forests of that country four years ago. Beth shot Vick a worried glance, but he remained silent, his attention firmly on Rossi.
“The Lobos Rojos are cutting deals with the Russian Mob—in effect, FARC with Polnoch’ Pulya—to trade weapons for drugs.”
“And money,” Harding interjected. “Don’t forget the money.”
Rossi nodded. “Part of why they’re diverting through the U.S. is to muddy up the money trail. Interpol has a tendency to cause a stink if they think American agencies will step in, and by bringing it onto U.S. soil, Russia and Colombia have bought themselves some time while we sort out the jurisdiction wars. In addition, they need a liaison but don’t want to pay the price of having a non-loyal third party turn traitor. The Mob and Lobos Rojos are funded by the necessary powers and conveniently located in the same city, so here we are.”
“Here we are,” Beth repeated carefully, “but where does Gavin fit into all this?”
“Like I said,” Gavin muttered, “long story.”
Beth glared at him. “Well, buddy, how about you Reader’s Digest that shit for me, so I can get around to asking what these fancy-ass detectives are doing in my ransacked apartment, okay?�
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Rossi raised his hand, like a school kid. “Oh! I can answer that one.” When she nodded, Pretty Boy casually rocked back on his heels, hands in pockets. “Your downstairs neighbor called in a noise complaint. We’ve got a ping on your address, so we intercepted the uniforms responding to the call and came on over.”
“You’ve got a ping.”
“We’ve got a ping,” he confirmed with a wink.
Black fire licked over melted-caramel skin visible above the starched collar of Rossi’s white dress shirt. Beth tilted her head to the side as she nodded toward his neck. “Are those real?”
“My tattoos?” Rossi grinned, a blinding flash of straight teeth and rakish dimples. “Come here and find out for yourself, corazón. You can touch, if you like.”
Perfectly cognizant of the detective’s outrageous flirting, Beth nonetheless moved as if to step toward him, only to be immobilized by a heavy hand fisting her blouse at the small of her back. She glanced up at a flush-faced Vick, awareness skittering down her spine at the blazing intent she saw in his gaze. “What?” she managed, voice turning hoarse as unabashed wanting for him sluiced through her veins. “I like tattoos.”
The fist at her back tightened, twisting the silk. “We’ll discuss your proclivities later.” He growled, low in his throat. “Now stop flirting.”
Well, finally. A real reaction. The cold spy mask disappeared, and the face watching her now carried the new-yet-familiar features of the only man she’d ever wanted. “I need to change my clothes,” she announced abruptly. “Or is everything in the bedroom—”
“I put all the ruined stuff in the corner, but you still have a lot of untouched items in the dresser and closet,” Gavin interrupted. “By the way, you have a shopping problem.”
“No, I have a shopping passion. Totally different.” She eyed the gaggle of menfolk, glanced longingly at the purse holding her gun, and muttered, “Be right back,” before making her way toward the bedroom.
