Covert Vengeance

by Kaylea Cross

  Kiyomi nodded and pushed up gingerly onto one elbow, her lips pressing together and a low sound of pain coming from her. Amber wasn’t squeamish, but seeing her old friend suffering like this turned her stomach. “Who was that guy that helped us?” Kiyomi asked.

  “Jesse Cordova. Contract killer now working with us, apparently.”

  A frown. “You know him?”

  “No, but you and I probably wouldn’t be alive without him. Plus my sister vouched for him.”

  Kiyomi’s bruised gaze shot to hers. “Tell me about your sister.”

  Amber told her about how she and Megan had been torn apart as kids and put into the Valkyrie program, then how Megan and Tyler had hunted her in Europe recently. “She’ll be waiting for us when we land in England.” Amber couldn’t wait to see her again, spend more time with her and get to know each other after spending over twenty-five years apart.

  “Wow,” Kiyomi said when Amber finished.

  “I know. It’s a lot to take in.” Amber took the water bottle from Kiyomi and gently grasped her shoulders to help her lie back down. “All right, back to sleep with you. I’ll wake you up a few minutes before we land.”

  Kiyomi groaned softly when she settled her head on the pillow. “What were you doing in Syria? How did you find us?”

  “I was coming for Hannah. What about you?”

  “Same.”

  Amber’s attention sharpened. “To rescue her?”

  “No.” Kiyomi sighed, looking and sounding exhausted. “To kill her.”

  Whoa. “Why?”

  Her face tightened. “Because she had to die.”

  The response sent a chill up Amber’s spine. But before she could ask what that meant, Kiyomi continued.

  “I’d infiltrated Rahman’s organization, but something or someone must have tipped them off about me because just when I was close to being able to get to her, they attacked.” She paused a moment. “There were too many of them. I killed two, but then…” She pushed out a painful breath. “Everything went sideways.”

  Amber covered her surprise and ran a hand over Kiyomi’s hair. “You’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you again. They’re all dead.”

  “Not Rahman.” Her tone was savage, suggesting she’d tangled with the notorious criminal personally.

  Amber curled her hand around Kiyomi’s and squeezed softly. Kiyomi deserved justice for what had happened to her. She deserved vengeance. Though it wouldn’t change anything. “He’ll pay for what he did to you.” I promise.

  Kiyomi studied her for a long moment, then returned the pressure of her grip and closed her single functioning eyelid.

  “Get some sleep,” Amber murmured, then covered her with a blanket and quietly shut the cabin door.

  Cordova glanced up at her when she came back, setting the tablet he’d been reading in his lap. And her heart beat a little faster at the sight of him. “How is she?”

  “Might have some fractured ribs, and her lacerations are definitely infected. As far as internal injuries… Her pulse is steady and she didn’t mention any other bleeding.” But she’d almost certainly been raped as well as tortured. God, that made Amber want to kill those bastards all over again, and Rahman.

  “She tell you how she came to be their prisoner?”

  She nodded. “She was going after Hannah too.”

  His calm expression never changed. “She had a contract on her?”

  “Not sure if it was a contract, or a personal score to settle.” Amber was betting on the latter. “She was captured before she could carry it out.”

  He shifted in his seat, his features tightening ever so slightly as he settled back again. “I hear you had a personal score with Hannah as well.”

  It was discomfiting to say the least to have him privy to that private intel. Blood rushed to her cheeks. “Yes. At least, I thought I did. At first, anyway.” But if Kiyomi had been hunting Hannah too, then maybe Amber had been right about the other operative all along. That eased some of the guilt pressing on her chest.

  “I was told someone was manipulating you. That someone involved with the Valkyrie Program trying to cover their tracks fed you intel to make other female operatives look dirty, assuming you’d target them.”

  Hearing it aloud sent shame crawling through her. She inclined her head and reached for a bottle of water between them, mainly to have something to keep her hands busy with. “Sure looks that way, yeah. I’m still looking into it.”

  As far as she could tell, someone within the program had tried to play her. They might have planted files in the ones Amber had hacked, containing false information about Hannah’s involvement in betraying her. To cover their ass by creating more confusion, then turning Amber and the other Valkyries against each other.

  Amber’s job now was to sift the truth from the lies and find out exactly what had happened. And when she found out who was responsible, they would get what was coming to them.

  She slanted him a sidelong glance. “How much did they brief you about my situation?”

  He lifted a broad shoulder. “Your background. The situation with your sister and how they captured you in Vienna. That you’d gone after the former teammates who set you up and left you to deal with the fallout during an op in Rome. You sold classified intel on them to their worst enemies, and let those enemies take care of the rest. But with Hannah, you might have made a mistake. And that’s why you came to Syria.” His tone was matter-of-fact, his expression devoid of judgment, but then he was a hired gun too. His hands weren’t exactly clean either.

  “Pretty much, yeah.” God, she felt exposed. He knew so much about her and she knew next to nothing about him. She didn’t like being at such a tactical disadvantage.

  “And I also know that you’re now part of the effort to find the others and bring them in until the source of the corruption is located.”

  “Right.” She itched to get back to England where she could finally hunker down someplace safe and resume her electronic digging in private. Please let me find definitive proof that Hannah was guilty. It was the only way she would be able to move on once and for all.

  His intense gaze never left her face. “Trinity mentioned it was your idea to spearhead starting up a WITSEC-type program for the women you bring in.”

  Amber concealed her astonishment. Why would Trinity have told him that? He wasn’t one of them. He’d no doubt been brought on board on a contract basis. “Yeah.” But her ultimate goal, after ensuring the safety of the other Valkyries, was to take down the people responsible for the Valkyrie Program. They’d taken everything from her, everything that mattered, and Amber was going to make sure they paid for it.

  She reached down to pull out Lady Ada again. “Anything from Trinity or the others on who that guy at the airfield was?”

  “Not yet.”

  She grunted and booted up the laptop, ready to get answers on her own. She was betting that guy was either linked to a job she’d done, or one of the dead Valkyries from her former team.

  Moments later, both their cell phones chimed. Amber looked at hers, frowning at the image on screen and the note from Trinity. “They got a hit from the facial recognition software.”

  “Yeah, they sure as hell did.”

  At the edge to his voice, Amber glanced up at him.

  Cordova’s jaw was taut as his gaze sliced to hers. “And it means we’ve got a serious problem.”

  JESSE WASN’T OFTEN surprised by much, but this was a scenario he hadn’t seen coming.

  “Do you recognize him?” Amber asked.

  He nodded, mind working fast. “It’s an alias.” He typed back a response to Trinity. “His real name’s Yury Stanislav.”

  Amber’s gaze shot back to her phone. “Yury?”

  “You know him?”

  “No. Maybe.” She frowned. “His name is…familiar.”

  She was holding something back. Something important. “Familiar how?”

  She looked up at him, her green eyes tro
ubled. “One of my previous targets had a boyfriend named Yury. It could be coincidence, but…”

  But in their world, there was no such thing as coincidences. “He’s former Bratva.” One of the best hitters in the business. Stanislav had a reputation for being as relentless as Jesse, but with a lot more contacts and money at his disposal. Shit. Had he been hired by the same person as Jesse? Or was he the person who had hired Jesse?

  Amber’s expression closed up. “She used to talk about him. Brag about him. Zoya. About what they would do together, where they would go once we pulled off the last bit of the op and got all the money transferred into our account.”

  An account or multiple accounts that Amber had likely set up herself.

  A new tension formed in his gut, pulling his insides tight. “Zoya who?”

  “Petrov. She was the mastermind behind the Rome op I worked with her and the others.”

  He didn’t recognize her name. And Amber didn’t seem to recognize Stanislav’s. “You don’t know about his rep?”

  “Not really. I never met him or saw a picture, but he would have known all about me, because of Zoya. You?”

  “Never met him in person, but he’s a ruthless bastard with a reputation that’s made him the stuff of legends.” He set his phone down, giving her his full attention. This was bad. The severity of the threat against them all had just doubled, at least. “Do you remember the bombing in St. Petersburg last fall?”

  “The government building, the one they decided was terrorism?”

  Yeah, that one. “He brought that entire building down in the middle of the work day. Over six-hundred people killed and another thousand or more injured. And he did it to kill a single target for a contract job.”

  He watched the gravity of it register in her face. “He’s after me because he wants revenge for Zoya.”

  Jesse nodded slowly. “You and anyone connected to you. He’s got contacts everywhere, including the Russian and Syrian military.”

  “Which is probably how he found me in Damascus.” She blew out a breath, shook her head. She didn’t seem alarmed, more annoyed. He had to admire her bravery. “Then I can’t go where the others are. I’ll get off the plane in Germany and disappear. You’ll have to take Kiyomi to England to meet the others.”

  “No.” He put a hand on her forearm, bringing that pretty green gaze back to his. She wasn’t beautiful in a classical sense, but she had a power all her own that he found mesmerizing. He also felt protective of her, something that she would surely hate. “You’ll be an easier target on your own. If you want to stay alive you need to stick close to me and the others.”

  Her jaw firmed, the stubborn lift of her chin enchanting him. “I’m not bringing more danger to the others. They’ve been through way too much already, and the mission is more important than me or my safety. There are people hunting us other than Stanislav. People in the government trying to cover their asses by eliminating us. The team has to get the rest of the Valkyries out of harm’s way before it’s too late.”

  Jesse shook his head, everything in him rebelling at the idea of her sacrificing herself for the greater good. There was no way he was budging on this. He was invested now, wanted to ensure she was safe. The force of his protectiveness toward her might not make sense, but it was there regardless. “We’ll go to the base Rycroft’s set up for us in England together, then figure the rest of it out as a team.”

  Amber eyed him warily, and though he didn’t know her well yet he swore he could hear her thoughts. She was still planning to take off and mitigate the threat against the others, maybe even by making herself bait to do it. “I’m not endangering anyone ever again. Least of all my sister.”

  Her loyalty spoke volumes about her character. Damn, she was something. A trained killer with a moral compass that was still functioning. That was a rarity in their line of work.

  He knew the pain of losing a sibling and would do whatever he could to make sure Amber never suffered it again. “We’ll protect them all. Together.”

  It had been a damn long time since Jesse had been part of a team. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. Or how long it had been since he’d had something real to fight for.

  So if Yury wanted to kill Amber, that fucker would have to go through him first.

  Chapter Nine

  Far below the plane, the English countryside spread out beneath them like a neat patchwork quilt—thousands of tidy squares and rectangles in different shades of green covering the gently rolling hills.

  Next to Amber, Cordova opened his eyes and checked his watch. He hadn’t left her side once. He’d been a quiet, intense presence through their stop in Germany, standing guard while she’d accompanied Kiyomi to the base hospital. Then he’d slept on the flight across the Channel, giving her way too much time to study him in secret, and way too much time to enjoy what she saw.

  In spite of herself, her gaze dropped to his forearm as he looked at his watch, taking in the way the muscles in his forearm flexed. “Should be on the ground in under ten minutes,” he said in that low, sexy voice that had fantasies spinning in her head. Was he strong and take charge in bed too?

  “Yep.” Then she’d finally be able to get some distance from him. That was a good thing. Even asleep he kept drawing her attention, while she was supposed to be finding where Stanislav was.

  She put aside Lady Ada. “I’ll go wake Kiyomi.”

  A team of military doctors and nurses had assessed and treated her at Landstuhl hours earlier. She hadn’t suffered internal damage or concussion, but two of her ribs were cracked and she was battling an infection. Amber and Cordova had put her on the bed in the rear cabin to let her sleep for the flight here, helped along with a dose of morphine from the hospital.

  Amber stood. Cordova did too. She stopped, her gaze shooting to his as another frisson of awareness rocketed through her. “Excuse me.” She didn’t want him touching her again. It threw her off balance.

  Stepping into the aisle, he lurched when they hit an air pocket, throwing out a hand as the plane dropped suddenly.

  A strong arm locked across her back, pulling her to a hard, muscled chest. She had only a second to absorb the shock of it and how good it felt before pulling away as the plane stabilized once again. “Thanks,” she blurted, willfully ignoring her body’s reaction.

  “Anytime.”

  She slanted him a sideways glance at the underlying heat in his tone, and was taken aback by the blatant male interest in his eyes. He wasn’t even trying to dampen or hide it.

  Wrenching her attention from his face, she pulled free of his grasp, pinpoints of heat streaking across her skin where her body brushed his.

  Holy.

  She pushed her body’s intense reaction to him from her mind and went to wake Kiyomi, glad for the reprieve. Her friend was now wearing a set of lavender hospital scrubs, sound asleep on the bed, stretched out on her stomach to keep off the freshly stitched wounds in her back.

  “Kiyomi,” she murmured, reaching out to touch her friend’s shoulder lightly.

  Kiyomi stirred, seemed to struggle to summon the strength to force one eye open. The swelling was still as bad as it had been hours ago, the bruising on her face now turning from deep blue to purple. “We there?”

  “Almost.” She stayed beside Kiyomi while they landed, then carefully coiled an arm around her friend’s waist and helped her from the cabin. Kiyomi leaned on her as they made their way up the aisle, a clear sign of her pain and fatigue.

  Cordova rose and came toward them, reached to take Kiyomi from her, but Kiyomi shrank back and shook her head with a low, “No.” Cordova immediately dropped his hands and stepped back but stayed close enough to help if need be.

  Amber glanced out a window on the left side near the cockpit. Excitement and anticipation built as the jet came to a gentle stop near the small terminal building. Two vehicles were parked just beyond the terminal, and she could see silhouettes moving in the windows of the building.


  She reached down for her backpack and helped Kiyomi to the cabin door. Cordova opened it and deployed the stairs, revealing Megan and Tyler coming toward them.

  A wide smile broke over Amber’s face as she watched her sister. She and Megan definitely looked related, though Megan was shorter and less curvy, with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes. “Hey,” she called out.

  Megan grinned back from the bottom of the steps while Tyler stood next to her. “Hi. You guys made good time.” Then her grin faded as she looked to Kiyomi. “I’m Megan, and this is Tyler. Security’s been tightened. You’re safe with us.”

  “Thank you,” Kiyomi said, and put on a little smile that had to hurt her cut mouth.

  Together Megan and Amber got Kiyomi settled into the back of a Range Rover. Shutting the door behind the injured Valkyrie, Amber turned to face her sister, who was standing just feet from her. She drank in the sight of Megan, overwhelmed once again by the sharp ache in her chest even as she masked her emotions.

  My sister. Her only remaining link to the family they’d lost.

  They stared at each other for a few beats as a slightly awkward silence spread between them, then Megan grinned and held out her arms. “Come on. Bring it in.”

  Laughing under her breath, Amber walked into the hug. It was fast, punctuated by a couple of light back slaps, then they separated. “You look well.”

  “Do I? Thanks. Must have something to do with this guy.” She snagged Tyler around the waist and leaned into him with a contented smile.

  Something close to envy pierced her at the sight. The connection between those two was undeniable. “Tyler. Good to see you.”

  “You too.” His slate blue eyes glimmered with suppressed humor. “I won’t have to assist in any daring escapes this time around, will I?”

  “Let’s hope not.” She introduced them to Cordova, who had watched everything in silence, then got in the back of the Rover with him, Kiyomi between them. She couldn’t help but snicker when Megan got behind the wheel and Tyler got in the passenger seat.