Virtues (Base Branch Series Book 8)

by Megan Mitcham

  “You’re clear to stay in the States free from the shadow of your past.” Tucker braced his hands on either side of his body and pulled himself more fully onto the desk.

  Those pretty pink lips opened and closed. Her jaw worked side to side for a minute. “How?”

  “I received evidence of your innocence, dealt with Haskens, and procured your amnesty.” Tucker’s arms folded loosely over his middle.

  Rin leaned forward, grabbed Damien’s hand, and squeezed the color from it.

  “Why?” Cara hid her excitement better. It hid behind miles and decades of mistreatment. And suddenly, Tyler wanted to know Tucker’s reasons as much as she did.

  “I want the three of you to work for the Base Branch.”

  3

  Rage doused her juvenile excitement in kerosene and lit a match. That was what dreamers got. Burned to a fucking crisp.

  Cara turned to Rin, Luck, and Tyler—she liked the name better than Bulldogger. “Excuse us for a moment.”

  “Grace stays,” the director barked.

  “Grace?” She pinned him with an I don’t give a mother f what you want glare.

  “Tyler Grace. My operative stays,” Tucker insisted. “Damien and Darinda—”

  “Please, call me Rin.” Her daughter picked one hell of a time to open her mouth. Cara was on the verge of an eruption.

  “Rin.” Vail Tucker flashed her little girl a wide smile. Why smile when you’re trying to relegate someone to a life of horror and hard decisions? “You two may wait outside.” He pressed a button on his desk phone.

  “Yes, Director Tucker?” Cara recognized the voice over the intercom as his assistant. She wondered what had happened to make Tyler so protective of the woman. He probably hadn’t recognized it, but he’d blocked her from Rhonda with his body. Maybe they were together or were about to be.

  “Rhonda, please see our guests to the break room.” Tucker’s hand hovered over the button to disconnect but faltered. “Also, make certain Lieutenant Slaughter is apprised of their arrival.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sweet voice chimed. Cara’s voice was never sweet.

  The man disconnected and then split his gaze back and forth between them.

  “My second in command is in and out packing up her office. She’s been known to shoot first and ask questions later, especially after an internal breach. It’s fresh in all our minds.” Something sad dimmed the light in his eyes. His gaze found Tyler’s before returning to her kids. “My assistant was mortally wounded in the attack. So don’t give her any shit.”

  Rin’s blue eyes bloated. “We won’t.”

  Luck squeezed her hand and drew her to the door where a middle-aged woman with unnatural but quite pretty blond hair hefted the thing open. Instantly, her estimation between Tyler and the woman changed. The look Rhonda offered him was one of appreciation and not the physical kind. To say nothing of the difference between their ages.

  “Right this way.” The woman smiled and led them out of the room.

  The door hit the frame.

  Cara turned to director Tucker. “No.”

  “You haven’t heard the offer,” he countered.

  “The last government job I had didn’t have many benefits,” she scoffed.

  “We’re not the CIA,” Tyler interjected from behind her.

  “Everyone thinks they’re special.” She laughed and whipped around to glare at him. “Girls who go to bed with the womanizer. The kid on the honor roll. A soldier going to bat for his country, his beliefs. They’re all deluded. So are you. You’re just another government organization.”

  “Not a single government but a network, working together, to advance peace.” He stepped forward. “Eliminating any who thwart it.”

  “You’re young. One day, the ideals you believe in will crumble at your feet, and then what?” she challenged.

  “I’ll fight to get them back.” He took another step, bringing his folded arms within reach.

  “Our ideals don’t crumble,” Tucker calmly stated.

  “What about your faith in your agents?” Her gaze thinned on Tyler.

  “We require proof before we disavow one of our own.” Tucker stood, drawing her fixed leer.

  “Haskens had proof.” She arched a brow.

  “No.” The director shook his head. “He had hearsay and a static-laced recording with a female voice to hold against a career unparalleled to any before it.” He fingered the naked skin on his ring finger and then looked at her.

  Cara braced herself for a sad story. He had the look. A little wistful. A little happy. A little sad.

  “My fiancée broke into this building and shot me in the gut. That was before I asked her to marry me.”

  “So you’re a masochist?”

  “I’m willing to look farther into a situation than the summary page.”

  “And you’re willing to let the bad guy shoot your employees, as long as they’re pretty and have a decent reason?”

  “My fiancée didn’t shoot Rhonda.”

  “Who did?”

  “Her brother.”

  “Wow. Seems bad decision-making runs in their family. I wouldn’t advise procreation.”

  He smiled. The prideful expression took over his entire face.

  “You already did. Is that why you’re marrying her?”

  “Easy,” Tyler warned quietly from far too close.

  “You’re quite the hypocrite, Cara.” Tucker might as well have slapped her cheek.

  “Hard-earned life lessons have made me whatever I am.” She ignored the tickle in the back of her throat and focused on the swell of belly-churning anger.

  “You’re judging my fiancée before you know a thing about her, which is what you’re afraid our organization will do to you. Carmen broke in the Base Branch to interrogate her brother, Carlos. We had him in lockup for drug and weapons trafficking, among other things. Carlos had kidnapped Carmen’s daughter after she refused to go along with the family business plan. He used her daughter’s location as leverage to get Carmen on board. When she couldn’t beat the information out of him, she did the only other thing she could.”

  “Shoot you and go along quietly.” Cara would do anything for her daughter. Massacre the entire building. That wasn’t a great thing, but what right-minded parent wouldn’t. A bit of respect for Tucker and his woman rained on her fury. Still.

  “I don’t want this life for my children.” Non-negotiable.

  “Damien?” Tucker asked without asking.

  “He’s mine as much as Rin. I tried to deny that fact because I needed him to help me save her. I put him in danger. I…” She let it trail off. They didn’t need to know she hated herself for it.

  “I understand,” Vail said. “Sophia is mine as much as the child growing inside Carmen is mine. I don’t want this life for either of them. They’ll probably be as stubborn as my soon-to-be wife and tell me to suck an egg, but that’s life.”

  “I’m past my prime.” Cara hated the thought more than she disliked the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the deepening crease around her mouth.

  “Not even close,” Tyler interjected.

  “Says the man who flattened me in seconds.” Her eyes rolled. She didn’t bother to look at him.

  “There’s not one of us in this place he hasn’t gotten the goods on. It’s irritating as shit.” Tucker scrubbed a hand over his face. “But we all have our strengths. I can out-sleuth him in my sleep.” His palms rubbed together. “You’re seasoned. I need someone like you to cover my lieutenant commander position.”

  Cara could never have a “normal” life again. Training turned to instinct far too long ago. This job would give her an honest living, but it would endanger Rin and Luck. She’d made more than her fair share of enemies over the years. Staying would be perfect; everything she’d ever wanted. And it would be so selfish.

  “Not interested.” She nearly choked on the words.

  “Tyler, please leave us,” Tucker said.

/>   “Yes, sir.” The heat burning into her right shoulder vanished. A small click sounded when the door opened and then closed. Cara swallowed past the tightness in her throat.

  Tucker sat in the chair Luck had occupied and offered her the free one she’d never accepted. With a mind full of reservation, she sat. The authority that was his demeanor slipped away, revealing the sad thing he hadn’t divulged earlier. Despite herself, her interest piqued. What made this well-established warrior regretful?

  “Cara, I know what it is to love someone enough that you think you aren’t the best thing for them.”

  She looked at the ceiling. She counted the slats on the metal grating of a vent in the ductwork.

  “That’s how she got in.” When her gaze returned to Tucker, he continued, “Carmen.”

  “Oh.” Smooth. Words failed her.

  “You are what they need.”

  “No matter the risk?”

  “You minimize them, plan for every eventuality, tuck the worry into a small corner of your mind, and live your life…for them and for yourself.”

  4

  “Did they bolt as soon as you let them out of the car?” Hunter’s fist connected with Tyler’s left kidney. Punishing knuckles slid off his slick skin, easing the damage. The words jarred almost as much as the punches. Not that he hadn’t pictured Cara shifting into drive, smoking the tires, and leaving trails of rubber on the pavement. He had. Far too often since he pulled away from the curb of the semi-abandoned warehouse, the general shape of her face disrupted the usually streamlined flow of his thoughts. Presently, the basics—a jab, jab, hook or leg bar and flip—would come in damn handy.

  “You think she’ll run too?” Tyler gritted through the blow to his pride and belly.

  “It’s all she knows.” His sparring partner gritted each word between a succinct series of exploratory punches. Hunter’s stacked shoulders flexed and bounded with each relaxed strike, hinting at the devastation they often levied.

  She could skip out through Canada in a matter of hours and be on the run again. Living on the run wasn’t much different from life during a mission; constantly looking over your shoulder, never knowing what, when, or where things would go to shit. Knowing they would disintegrate the moment you needed them to hold together the most. Though it seemed like it some of the time, he wasn’t constantly on a mission. He had friends. He had a house. He had a home with his large, loud family and cows, horses, and space to get away from it all.

  Droplets of sweat splattered onto the mat floor, a floor he thought could stand an additional inch of padding. Hunter took the bait, honing in on the gap he’d intentionally left with a lazy front hand. The ominous missile coiled and then shuttled toward his head. Tyler dropped to both knees. He hugged the stocky man’s thighs. The image of Rin grabbing her mother assaulted him, a second assailant hiding in the brush.

  Hunter’s elbow sounded a gong. It reverberated around the various lobes and hemispheres, shattering the treacherous tracks Tyler’s steaming brain insisted on traveling. Loose rocks. Neat. Five feet of snow. Wonderful. Yellow tracks. Never better. Full steam ahead. He grimaced, tensed, and straightened his legs. They fell like two lengths of timber.

  “Ugh.” Oliver grabbed his mid-stage beard and tugged. “I’ve not seen this manner of suckage since you drank the whole liter of moonshine your daddy gave you to ring in the New Year. If you don’t get your shit together, I’m stripping you of your nickname.”

  Tyler rolled off Hunter, who grabbed his arm, and used the other one to tap three times. “I know. I’m…” The concrete ceiling stared down at him, judging.

  “You’re intrigued.” A hand appeared between him and the ceiling.

  “I’m bushwhacked.” He didn’t take the hand. “We’ve been teamed up for forever.”

  “Yeah, our separate assignments have you eating dirt.” Hunter’s blinding half-smile took the place of his hand. “Right.” When the thing went full bore, Tyler squinted.

  “Tucker’s coming off.” Oliver squeaked the words as eagerly as a boy about to hit second base for the first time would.

  No way could he blame the guy. They had all been killing time, and each other, to put themselves in the director’s path at the end of a long day. Details they’d wanted some hours ago, but international security and little stuff like that came first. Tyler popped off the floor, ignoring the suction of his soaked skin to the plastic. The three of them turned to the right, effectively becoming a barricade to the exit behind them.

  A towel hung around the director’s shoulders. Sweat rained from the end of his nose, the points of his elbows, and down the center of his too-many pack. Tyler liked beer and cornbread too much to show off every little ab muscle, but that didn’t mean they weren’t as strong. Tucker dragged the end of the towel over his face and reached for the door. Drops of perspiration splattered against the glass. When he opened the door, the sound of several sets of furious footfalls echoed in the half-mile track’s background.

  The director strode through the doorway, stepped up to the mat, and pulled the towel off his shoulders. It landed with a splat and a challenge. Tyler breathed, but the man’s tilted head stopped him. “All right, boys. First to get me to the mat earns the honor of watching Cara Lee.”

  Watching Cara Lee? Tyler’s brows pinched along with a headache at the center of his forehead. “What makes you think she’s still in town?”

  “Love for her daughter. Nothing else.” Tucker’s head shook. “We, you, have to make sure she sees us as more than an intergovernmental strong-arm.”

  “Me?” Tyler planted a hand on his sopping chest. His gaze swung left and right. His wingmen had retreated several steps. “Pussies.”

  “I like my balls right where they are.” Hunter palmed said appendage in a brief love five of sorts. “Thank you very much.”

  Oliver lifted his palms. “I got the stink eye from Damien and Cara.”

  “Maybe because you were staring at Rin’s and Cara’s legs,” Tucker offered.

  “I couldn’t help myself. I have a thing for blondes.” Oliver shrugged.

  Tyler suddenly wished he had sparred Oliver. He shoved the comment aside and the childish hint of jealousy. His attention swung to Tucker. “Why me?”

  “You have a way with wild animals. Cara is essentially a spooked bull.” The director’s shoulders bobbed. “I think she could use some gentling.”

  “We gentle horses, not bulls.” Before Tyler got the words good and out, Tucker came in hard with hands. Tyler used his mounting angst and his namesake to pin the director…on the third attempt. Not bad for fighting a man who’d spent the last three decades winning all over the world at every endeavor.

  Winning Cara over would be significantly harder. Even harder still would be to see her on a daily basis without getting killed or neutered. Of the two, he’d choose death. Survival meant gentling her. Quite the paradox, considering he killed people for a living. He shoved that thought aside in the heap with Oliver’s comment. No time for psychological analysis. He had to win Cara over, and he knew just the thing to facilitate that. Women liked presents.

  Tyler knew the one she’d appreciate most.

  5

  “I can have us out of here, no trace, in one hour.” Luck jetted past her into the building’s garage.

  Cara jerked to a stop at the base of the stairs. The last thing in the world her daughter needed to see was a dead body. Especially today. Especially one Cara had killed. “Upstairs,” she ordered.

  Luck skidded to a halt and swiveled a wide-eyed questioning look at her.

  She offered him a brusque nod and grabbed Rin’s hand. Clunking boots and the slap of sandals echoed in the concrete and metal interior. Something shifted inside Cara’s chest as she hauled Rin up the steps like a child. As Cara had when she was five and they walked through a congested parking lot, the delicate hand wriggled and jerked against the mandate.

  “Do we really need to leave?” Rin planted both feet, forcing Ca
ra to make a decision. Stop or release her daughter’s hand. She stopped and turned to find Rin’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “They said you were free.”

  “Babe.” Luck placed his hand on Rin’s shoulder. His thumb rubbed in a sweet circle over the edge of her tank top and bare skin. Her narrow jaw arced toward him. They made such a stunning pair. It wasn’t their easy looks but those broken edges that fit together to make an unparalleled whole. Even her grudge against the boy couldn’t discount the proof. He kissed the tip of Rin’s nose and then levered back. “People lie.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Rin didn’t yell the words or even speak them with anger, which sharpened their points all the more.

  Using fingertips to pinch her sides, Cara stemmed the flow of blood from the wound her daughter’s truthful words inflicted. She pasted on the poker face she’d mastered over a lifetime, turned, and continued. Vail Tucker’s proposal had taken her to her knees almost as much as holding her daughter again after so many years apart surely had. His word alone wasn’t enough on which to hang the safety of her daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law. She needed to cast feelers to her back alley and high-level informants. Verification of the Base Branch’s existence and Vail Tucker’s place in it would be a starting point. Tyler Grace’s would be icing on the multi-layered cake. But … if she verified them, she’d also risk giving away hints on her location.

  Thoughts and ideas fluttered around her like mayflies over a corpse. If she caught one, another demanded her attention. She needed to get her scattered thoughts together. So much had happened after a decade and a half of nothing. Nothing but hiding and covering her ass every day of the year and worrying about her child.

  Cara halted on the second landing. Rin and Luck pulled up short on the small platform with her. Without thought or preamble, she opened her arms, closed her eyes, and hoped like hell.

  Lanky, lively arms pretzeled her chest, and a gasp seeped through her lips. She wrapped her arms around her daughter’s back and squeezed the breath out of them both. Contentment haunted, tugging her heart like a marionette.