Identity Crisis

by Rochelle Paige

  “So, what’s the plan, boss?” Agent Steele asked.

  “The plan is simple,” Agent Phillips answered, jerking his head in my direction. “Ms. Sinclair is going to contact them as Serena Taylor. She’s going to offer them the card in exchange for her safety. She will also ask for a tidy sum of money. It will be easier for them to believe she’s motivated by greed since it’s why they’re in business.”

  “The fuck you say!” Blaine roared, pulling me to the side. “These are incredibly dangerous men. They lurk in a world she cannot even begin to understand. There’s no way I’m going to let you use her as a pawn. She’s not expendable.”

  His use of the word pawn struck me like a punch in the stomach. I might not like Agent Phillips, but his plan wasn’t any different than what Blaine had been considering when we first met. “Like you would have done before you got to know me?”

  Chapter 17

  Blaine

  I searched Delia’s eyes for any sign of lingering hurt feelings. When she tossed her question at me, I thought maybe it stemmed from a sense of betrayal we hadn’t eliminated when we talked through what she’d heard me say to Brody. Now, I found myself hoping that was why she’d said it. I didn’t like the stubborn tilt to her chin or how she stood taller, prouder—like she was determined to listen to what Phillips had to say regardless of how I felt about it.

  “Blaine’s right. Delia needs to stay as far away from this as possible. You have a woman with you,” Brody said, jerking his head at Agent Steele, “if you really think your plan is best, use her as a decoy instead.”

  “It won’t work,” Agent Phillips insisted. “Open your eyes, man. Based on the photos you just showed me, she’s a dead ringer for Serena Taylor. Same build and similar facial structure. Hell, someone at TAG already mistook her for Serena once, you told me so yourself.”

  “And then they shot her,” I reminded him. “There’s no fucking way I’m going to let her die for real because you’re too goddamn lazy to come up with another plan. Your agents signed on for the risks, Delia didn’t. She’s the only innocent in this room. Do your damn job and protect her!”

  “I’m not the one who pulled Ms. Sinclair into this and you know it,” Agent Phillips retorted. “You guys are former Navy SEALs. You’re supposed to be the best of the best for Christ’s sake. You need to get into the game and use your head if we’re going to have any hope of taking The Armory Group down.”

  “I’d happily step into Ms. Sinclair’s shoes. Unfortunately, Agent Phillips is correct. That’s not our best play here,” Agent Steele added as she moved to stand next to Delia. “I may be a woman, but I lack the curves to pass as Serena. We could disguise my figure and maybe get away with it, but we’d still have the height issue to contend with. There isn’t much we can do to make me look four or five inches shorter.”

  “Shit,” I hissed. Seeing the two women standing side by side, I knew how ridiculous Brody’s suggestion had been. It was something I should have realized instantly, but I was so far off my game, it wasn’t remotely funny. If we moved forward with the plan Agent Phillips suggested, Delia was the only one who could pull it off. “Then we need a different plan. I’m not letting Delia close to these guys again. They executed Jonathan Roberts because Serena logged into their site. He was one of their own and they had no problem killing him. Then they beat the crap outta Serena before they shot her in the head, killing her. They already shot Delia once. She was lucky as hell their aim wasn’t true or she’d be dead, too. I’m not going to serve them a golden opportunity to rectify their mistake.”

  Delia whirled to face me, her eyes lit with the same fire they held each time she argued with me. If anything, it burned brighter than ever before. “Excuse me? I’m standing right here. You don’t need to speak for me when I’m more than capable of making my own decisions.”

  “Not in this,” I bit out. “Your safety is my responsibility.”

  “How can you possibly keep me safe when they know I’m out there somewhere? I don’t want to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone to come after me again. You know they won’t let me walk away. It’s why Brody called Agent Phillips in the first place. You both know the only way I’ll ever be truly safe is if these guys are out of the picture. Completely.”

  “We’re going to take them down,” I insisted. “Just not this way.”

  She waved her hand at the agents. “They’ve been hunting these guys for God only knows how long, right? They haven’t managed to catch them yet, and neither have any of the other agencies working on this case. A veritable alphabet soup of the best our criminal justice system has to offer hasn’t been able to do a damn thing to get close to The Armory Group, but I can because of some sick cosmic joke. They say everyone has a twin out there and mine just happens to be a woman they’ll hunt to the ends of the earth to make sure they can keep their damn secrets. Well, I say we don’t make them look too hard. Let’s turn the tables on them and use the only advantage we have right now—me.”

  Delia was chomping at the bit to do something, anything, to get her life back. I understood why she felt this way, but I didn’t like it. Not for her. Not for the woman who was so sweet, she could almost give me a toothache.

  I’d busted my ass for years defending God and country. I already paid my dues with blood, sweat, and tears. My sacrifices weren’t going to be in vain, dammit. There's no chance in hell my woman was going to be in the line of fire. Her dues had already been paid. By me.

  She hadn’t trained day in and out for years like Brody and I had. She didn’t carry a badge like Phillips and his team. She spent her days safe and sound in her home writing stories with happy endings for fuck’s sake. She wasn’t prepared for the danger she’d face if she went along with Phillips’ plan.

  But I didn’t know if I could talk her out of it. Gone was the soft woman I’d woken up to this morning, looking beautiful and warm as she lay curled up in bed. In her place was a Delia I hadn’t faced yet. She looked fierce—still beautiful, but icy as she paced the room while Phillips outlined his plan.

  A plan I wanted Delia to have no part in unless it was from the safety of this suite.

  A plan she seemed eager to carry out.

  A plan that terrified me—using her as bait to draw the people who had killed Serena into Phillips’ web. Men who would be gunning for Delia the moment she was within their crosshairs.

  My woman. Bait.

  It had to be some sick cosmic joke. Payback for dragging her into this mess in the first place instead of sending her away to safety. I couldn’t get it to compute in my brain. It was impossible when all I could think about was her getting shot—again. The Armory Group finishing off what they’d tried to do when they saw her at Serena’s office. Her body riddled with bullets instead of the graze she’d taken to the arm.

  I didn’t like the plan.

  I made it clear how much I didn’t like the plan.

  Clearly. Concisely. Often.

  They just kept going through it, until they thought they had it all figured out. Like it was feasible. Only it wasn’t because the whole damn thing rested on Delia’s shoulders. We were a group of two former Navy SEALs, three FBI agents, and a civilian. How the fuck was it that everyone thought the civilian, the only innocent in the room, was the person who should take point on this?

  My entire body tensed as Agent Phillips approached her. I didn’t trust the bastard as far as I could throw him. I wanted nothing more than to drag her as far away from him as possible. It wasn’t a viable option, though. If I tried to run with her and they caught up with us, Phillips would never let me be part of the takedown. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to let Delia do this without me, so I found myself in the position of having to suck it up and deal without punching him in the face. He knew he had me between a rock and a hard place and had been taking full advantage of the fact as soon as he knew Delia was locked into the plan.

  My decision not to punch him
was about to fly out the window as I focused on what he was saying to her. “Beautiful and brave. It’s quite the combination, Ms. Sinclair.”

  Yanking Delia away from him and placing her behind my back, I faced off with Phillips. “She’s mine. You don’t get close to her.”

  His chest puffed out like a fucking peacock thinking he could take me, the clueless bastard. “During this operation, she’s my asset. I most certainly will need to get close to her to prep her for what to expect. Very close since she’s going to need to be wired.”

  “I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you,” I growled. “Nobody gets close to her, and I’ll kill to keep it that way. Not you. Not TAG. Nobody.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Phillips' voice climbed as he spoke. “I could throw the cuffs on you right now if I wanted to.”

  “How about we all calm down?” Agent Steele intervened. She slid a hand between us and pushed against my chest as Delia’s hands pulled at my shoulders.

  “Calm, huh? Delia was telling us all about being calm right before you guys got here.” Brody’s voice held a wealth of humor. It was a technique he’d used in the past to defuse tense situations. “Maybe we should ask her to go over her theory again?”

  I felt her giggle before I actually heard it. The front of her body was pressed against my back and she was shaking from the effort it took to hold back her laughter. A battle she didn’t win. Thank fuck, too. It was enough to stifle my anger.

  “Maybe not,” I said wryly as Delia slipped under my arm and settled at my side.

  “Are you willing to move forward with the plan without Mr. West’s assistance?” Agent Steele asked her.

  “Absolutely not.” Delia’s response was quick, her voice firm. There was no hesitation.

  “That’s what I thought.” Agent Steele’s focus switched to her boss. “Alienating the two former SEALs your operational asset wants at her side would put this entire assignment at risk.”

  “It’s not her choice who stays or goes. This is my operation.”

  Based on the way her fists clenched and her face tightened in anger, Phillips’ response irritated Agent Steele almost as much as it did me. “She’s a civilian. It’s not her responsibility to face The Armory Group, but she’s agreed to do it anyway. At great risk to herself, I might add. Do you really want to run the chance of losing her cooperation? I certainly don’t. Nor would I want to be in your shoes when you’d have to explain that you were the reason she refused to help to the higher-ups in DC.”

  It was the smart approach to take with Phillips, reminding him of the powers that be in DC. He was hungry to move higher up in the ranks and he’d end up with a black mark in his file if he mishandled this operation. Agent Steele handled her boss like a pro, earning my respect. Brody’s, too, if the approving glance he sent her way was any indication.

  “I’m not the young man I was back when you arrested me, Phillips,” Brody warned. “I won’t need my brother to pull strings if you go against us on this. I’ve built my own contacts over the years. Blaine has, too. We have an entire brotherhood behind us. There’s no such thing as an ex-SEAL. Once you’re in, you’re in. And Blaine and I have the budweisers to prove we’re in. Any idea you have of doing this without our participation, get it out of your head now.”

  “If your brotherhood is so strong, why did you have to call me for help?” Phillips was all bluster now. It was obvious from his expression that he knew it, too. He just wasn’t willing to back down from the argument yet.

  “Because it was the right thing to do,” Delia answered, stepping forward to stand between Brody and Phillips. “And they’re honorable men used to making tough decisions.”

  Agent Steele moved beside Delia. “C’mon, boss. Let this go before we find ourselves on the other side of that door with no way to get back inside. I, for one, don’t want to be standing out there while the guys from ATF laugh their asses off as they waltz right past us and take over this operation.”

  Phillips studied Delia before shifting his gaze to Brody and finally moving on to me. “I understand this operation may be difficult for you due to the nature of your relationship with Ms. Sinclair. I’m even prepared to make some concessions because of this. However, we need to be clear on one thing. This is my operation. I’m in charge. Not Ms. Sinclair. Not Hack. And not you. Me.”

  The sneering way he used Brody’s nickname pissed me off all over again. “I never said you weren’t. As Delia already said, we called your team in because it was the right thing to do. We know you’re our best bet to take these guys down and fast. The key word here being fast, so how about we get back to the task at hand.”

  “Good,” he replied, satisfaction clear in his voice.

  “Although, if you fuck this up, you’d better believe it won’t just be Blaine and me you’ll have to contend with. Damian will be after your head, too.” It was so like Brody to help diffuse a situation only to stir the pot once everything had been settled. I didn’t know anyone else who liked getting the last word more than he did.

  “Enough,” Agent Steele growled. “Let’s go through the plan again. From the top. Start us off, Delia.”

  She nodded in agreement before moving to stand by Brody’s laptop. “I’ll log in to their website, go to the chat function Brody found the last time he was in their system, and send a message asking for a meet. I tell them it’s none of my business what they’re into. That I blame Jonathan for dragging me into this mess and I just want out of it. I’ll promise to leave town. No calls to the police. No talking to anyone about anything to do with The Armory Group. I won’t even go back to my apartment. I’ll meet with them and hand over the card I found in Jonathan’s apartment. The only thing I want in return is cash. Not because I’m blackmailing them, of course. It’s so I can lay low and make sure I don’t do anything to draw attention their way.”

  “How much will you need?” Steele asked.

  Delia’s reply was swift. “Not much. Just one-hundred thousand dollars.”

  “There’s your first problem and she hasn’t even met with them yet,” I chimed in. “By now, they’re familiar with Serena and her habits. They won’t believe she only wants a hundred K to walk away from all this. With the way she liked to live, she’d ask for a helluva lot more than that.”

  Agent Steele looked toward Phillips, deferring to him for the first time since the argument. “He knew Ms. Taylor the best. We should increase the amount if he says it doesn’t fit with her personality.”

  “TAG’s operation is huge. They aren’t your run of the mill gun dealer selling .22s from their trunk. They won’t flinch from a big number. It might even make them take her more seriously. Greed is something they’ll understand,” Brody added.

  “Ask for a million,” Steele instructed Delia, who paled at the idea.

  “Alrighty then, I’ll just ask the arms dealers for a million dollars. Even though they want to kill me. Makes perfect sense to me.”

  “The important thing is to keep the chat going for as long as you can,” Agent Michaels chimed in. “If their security is as good as Mr. Slater says it is, I’ll need as much time as you can buy me to piggyback in and infiltrate their network.”

  “That’s one of the parts I don’t understand,” Delia said.

  “I’m going to be on the hunt for their customers’ personal information. It will be their biggest bargaining chip during questioning. If I can get it before the arrest, we won’t have to give them a deal.”

  Delia still looked confused. “I thought Brody said we needed to limit how much time we were logged in so they can’t trace us.”

  “I did, but they won’t be searching as hard because you’re offering to meet them. Why bother when they think you’ll be within their grasp soon?” Brody explained. “Your chat session is our perfect opportunity to hack their system. We’ll be able to slide in with your login and dig around while they think you’re busy setting up the meet.”

  Agent Michaels nodded his he
ad. “It’s like they handed us the keys to their kingdom. It doesn’t matter how good their security is, we’ll still be able to get in with you. The only question is, will we be able to stay in long enough to get what we need?”

  “If not, Ms. Sinclair meeting with them will be even more vital to this operation,” Phillips said. “We won’t be able to let a single one of them get away. Not if we want to be able to access their site again to get what we need.”

  “No pressure or anything,” Delia said wryly.

  I listened as they went over the details of the meet. Where it would be. How many agents they’d call in for backup. Everything. I absorbed the details, burning them into my memory, unwilling to leave anything to chance. This might be Phillips’ operation, but I was going to put stopgap measures into place. Fuck asking for permission. I could ask for forgiveness later.

  Chapter 18

  Delia

  By the time the agents left, I was exhausted and beyond ready to head to bed. We’d spent the entire day and night working through all the details until they were drilled into my head. I’d picked at my lunch and dinner since my stomach was still unsettled. I didn’t think I was going to be able to eat a real meal until this was all over. I’d been incredibly relieved when we’d finally headed into the bedroom. Until Blaine turned on me the instant the door closed behind us.

  “You shouldn’t have agreed to the plan.”

  I thought we’d worked through all of this when he’d finally agreed to move forward. He sat right next to me the whole time we ran through the plan, even offered suggestions here and there. Some of which Phillips had taken and some he’d adamantly refused to consider. Apparently, Blaine had just been waiting until we were alone to try to talk me out of this—again. “And wait for however long it would take for this situation to be handled?” I asked. “My parents are due to port in two days. I’m already going to have to explain the voicemail the police have no doubt left them. You know, the one about my murder? I don’t want to have to follow that conversation up by them claiming I need to go into hiding for heaven only knows how long while the FBI tries to apprehend the arms dealers who want me dead. Arms dealers who have a knack for technology and could probably hunt me down regardless of where I hid. Or the witness protection agency stashed me, if I even qualify for protection. Arms dealers who have successfully evaded authorities for years.”