by Lea Griffith
“Seriously, sir, Ella wants to hear about Serbia.” Ella’s anxiety communicated across the small space between them. It was abhorrent to Jude. He’d do damn near anything to lighten the atmosphere. Messing with his team leader helped him meet his goal.
She hated conflict. How the hell she’d ever migrated to the CIA and military service was beyond Jude.
King opened his eyes and stared hard at Jude. Jude grinned and pointed to Ella, trying to get the other man to understand why he messing with him. King flipped on his communication unit. “Jude, you’re a pain in my ass.”
“Sir, if it’s—” Ella began.
King held up a hand and shot Jude a look. Jude was unperturbed.
Already the brackets of stress around her mouth had disappeared. “It was fifteen men, Your Highness. You were pinned down behind a building in the middle of the country, and you fought with nothing but a—”
“I know the damn story, Jude,” King said firmly.
“I’m just saying,” Jude began. “It’s a damn good story.”
A beep sounded over their comm devices. “Five minutes until touchdown, boys and girls,” Vivi informed them.
Olivia Granger, a.k.a. Vivi, was a CIA analyst who’d joined Endgame when she’d refused to let her man, Rook, leave her. Jude smiled at that. Vivi was a tiny bit of nothing, but she had badass Rook Granger wrapped around her little finger—and he loved it.
Jude understood it. He hadn’t when he’d been told Vivi was joining them in Port Royal, their home base. But damn did he understand now.
King’s gaze touched on them all, and Jude watched the other man’s face transform to warrior. Every person on this bird was a warrior. And just like every other mission they took, this mission—under the cover of darkness in the middle of a desert outside Beirut, Lebanon—could very well become a war.
Jude let his gaze settle on Ella. Her eyes were closed, her nostrils flaring as she drew in deep breaths, preparing. He knew why King had chosen her to go when Nina came up sick. Ella spoke Lebanese.
Hopefully, they’d be in and out so fast nobody would need to use her translating skills.
“Two minutes until insertion,” the pilot relayed.
“What the hell is that?” the copilot asked suddenly.
Jude’s neck tightened. That didn’t sound good.
“Bogeys in the air! Repeat, bogeys in the air!” the pilot yelled over the comm links.
Jude immediately glanced at Ella, warning her with his eyes to brace herself. Fear raced up his spine. It left an acrid taste in his mouth and a burning in his gut. He pulled his helmet on and watched as she did the same.
Antiaircraft fire peppered the fuselage of the bird as it tipped into an evasive maneuver. Jude grabbed his oh-shit handle and saw his teammates do the same. His gaze snagged on Ella.
“Safe,” he mouthed.
She nodded and held up six fingers.
“In, out, protect yourselves. Remember the alternate extraction point,” King ordered. “Ella, you’re behind me at all times, you understand?”
Jude’s gaze narrowed on his team leader.
He knew if he looked at Ella, he’d see the terror clouding her bright-gray eyes.
Everything in Jude screamed for him to cover Ella’s body with his own. This insertion had just gone straight into clusterfuck territory. He needed to protect her.
“You got something to say, Jude?” King asked harshly.
Instead of moving toward her, Jude shook his head at King and pulled his visor down as he breathed in deep. King would shield her with his own body, give his own life for any of them. Jude knew that and wouldn’t disobey him, even if it went against every instinct he possessed.
“We’re hit! We’re hit!” the copilot yelled over the comm units.
The bird swayed, dipping sharply to the right and turning in a gut-swirling three-sixty. They were going down hard.
Please let her live, Jude pleaded to the God he rarely acknowledged. Please, if anyone needs to die, let it be me.
“We’re going down, Your Highness!”
Chase’s voice was panicked in Jude’s ear mic. There was nothing he could do. He was impotent here—at the mercy of the wind and the same God he’d just lifted up a prayer to. The dying whine of the bird’s rotors blew through his mind. This was it.
“Brace for impact!”
The helo fell rapidly. Jude couldn’t get his bearings. He needed to see Ella. And then the helo slammed into the ground, and Jude’s world snapped to black.
Chapter 1
Jude adjusted his scope’s sight and settled down in the slight depression between two trees. Pine straw, dying leaves, and branches covered him. He’d made the blind to blend into the landscape seamlessly. The sun was behind him now, its heat nothing more than a fading promise. The wind had picked up an hour ago, and he allowed its bitter cold to seep into his soul. It was soothing to a degree, though Jude doubted anything could ever completely cool his rage. He’d been here for two days, following intel that would hopefully lead him to…her. He’d stopped even thinking her name months ago. The sound of it reverberating through his mind caused unbearable pain that spread from his heart through every limb. It was debilitating, that pain. And unending. Instead, he remembered her face, the way her body had once moved beneath him, and the promises she’d made that had inevitably been nothing more than lies.
Movement in the compound below had him tightening his grip on his rifle. He’d been trained to take down targets a mile away, but today was simply reconnaissance. When he’d seen her in Beirut six weeks ago, after a year of believing her dead and gone, his mind had denied what his heart had immediately recognized.
El—her.
Then she’d disappeared in the smoke and confusion, and he’d had no choice but to leave her again.
In the hell that was Lebanon.
He tightened his grip on his weapon, tamping down his dangerous emotions. Below him, four white Range Rovers pulled up to the concrete warehouse that had once been a chemical engineering facility. Unsubstantiated rumors had it that the facility’s purpose was to conceal Horace Dresden’s biochemical weapons stash. Whatever the case, those rumors had hit Jude’s ears and his skin had prickled.
For two years, Endgame’s mission had been the elimination of Horace Dresden. For Jude, the mission had morphed. Oh, he wanted Dresden, but his motivation resided in the fact that if he could find that murdering son of a bitch, he’d find her.
The right-side driver’s door of the lead Rover opened, and a dainty foot encased in a nude stiletto heel lowered to the ground. The leg attached to the foot had his gut clenching. He’d tasted the arc of that calf, tongued the indention of that knee, and had his hands all over that thigh.
She stepped out of the Rover completely, and his gut clenched, then relaxed. It was a reaction he’d only had with her. Jude was a warrior, a soldier. He’d spent most of his adult life training, fighting, and killing. He was damn good at what he did. Had never even realized something was missing from his life until she’d stepped into his sphere and taken him over.
The wind caught her overcoat and tossed the ivory folds, allowing him a glimpse of a body that was thinner than he remembered but no less captivating. Through the scope, his gaze trailed upward over her hips and then higher across her breasts and up along the slope of her collarbone. Her skin was the same color as her coat but softer, glowing. The flavor of that skin danced like a phantom over his tongue.
The trees above him bowed to the wind, and in his spot on the ridge above the compound, his nostrils flared, a stallion scenting its mare. He swore he could taste her on the breeze. She moved to shut the door and, in an instant, froze.
She slowly lifted her hand and removed the dark sunglasses that hid the frost of her gaze from him. The scar at her temple mocked him. It was the only mark on the otherwise unblemi
shed face that stalked his dreams. And then she angled her head toward his location.
His heart locked in his chest. No way she had any idea he was here. He hadn’t even told King where he was headed—had kept the information about Dresden’s supposed compound from the Piper, King, and his teammates. This was what he’d been reduced to. Spying on a woman who’d betrayed him…betrayed them. Desperate for a glimpse of her. Desperate to make her pay.
The wind settled at that moment, but still she gazed up toward him. The man who’d gotten out of the Rover on the other side must have called her name, because she glanced at him and her lips moved before she began walking toward the building. Jude was too far away to hear her words.
Six men got out of each of the remaining Rovers, each carrying a small metal briefcase. Jude would bet his left nut they were here to obtain some of Dresden’s horde of biochemicals.
He trained his gaze on her again, watching as her long legs ate up the distance between the Rover and the building, and for a crazy second, Jude remembered her as she’d been the night before his world had been blown to hell. He saw her walking on their beach in Virginia, the wind whipping her long ebony hair, the waves playing havoc around her delicate ankles. He saw her head turn as a grin broke across her face. He saw the flush of their recent lovemaking on her body.
A hawk screamed in the distance, and Jude was jerked to the present. Instead of seeing his woman through the sight of the scope, he saw her. A stranger. A traitor.
Jude’s sight remained locked on her, his finger caressing the trigger as he let the anger flow through him. He’d heard the whispers—maybe she was a double agent. Maybe she wasn’t the traitor he knew her to be. Maybe she was both and neither.
Maybe he hadn’t given everything he was to a ghost.
He needed the truth, and he’d resolved that he’d have to be cold and merciless in finding it. She’d led them on this path. She could damn well walk it with him.
The man entered the building, but before she stepped in behind him, she once again turned her gaze to Jude’s location.
She couldn’t see him, but for Jude, it didn’t matter. She knew he was there. He knew she knew. She raised both hands, holding up six fingers. It was so quick that Jude wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him as his heart threatened to burst from his chest. Had it been supplication or warning? He didn’t know—but the sadness that passed like a cloud over the contours of her face in that moment had him swearing.
Then she lowered her hands as the soft curves of her mouth lifted in a travesty of a smile.
Jude cursed again, the wind taking the foul word and tossing it to and fro. As she moved out of his sight, his gut clenched once more. King had warned Jude that all was not as it seemed, to give him time to figure it out.
Jude hadn’t been inclined to give himself that time. Until this moment.
Because there’d been one other emotion on her face just now that ripped a hole right through Jude’s shriveled heart. He’d seen it many times over the course of their year together but had despaired he’d ever see it again. It had been the truest of all the emotions she’d ever displayed with him.
It was the one thing that stayed his trigger finger. It was the only thing that could save her.
Love.
* * *
Her neck had been itching for weeks, as if a scope’s site was embedding itself into the skin there, and she knew why.
Jude.
Her past. She swallowed the agony of that truth. He would always be her past because the simple fact was that Ella didn’t believe she had a future.
As soon as she stepped out of the Rover, she’d felt him on her skin, tasted him on her tongue. Of course, that was fanciful. But she knew he was up there, watching. When she saw him at Dresden’s place in Beirut, she’d known he would come for her, and she knew that Vivi Granger was too good not to locate her.
Ella winced. All the subterfuge of the last year was a terrible weight she carried every day. Endgame thought she was a traitor, and even though she’d had an opportunity to explain parts of her story to King, it was impossible to recap her hell in a single conversation. And that was all they’d had before Dresden’s men had caught up to them.
Did Jude hate her? Want revenge for the perceived betrayal her own team leader had believed? Why was he here now when she was so close to figuring out how to dismantle Dresden’s operations?
“Where’s your ape?” Segorski asked.
She assumed he was referring to Brody Madoc. Brody had been her constant companion over the last year. She’d managed to plead for his life when Dresden and Savidge had been intent on killing her teammate. All she’d had to do was give up an innocent to see Brody saved.
Ella had done it and not blinked. Team before all else. Did she wish she could have made a different decision? Now that she’d met Allie Redding, yes, she did. But hindsight was always twenty-twenty, and Ella didn’t have time for gazing into the past.
Except when it came to Jude.
“Your ape?” Segorski demanded again.
“Obviously, he’s not here. I’ll be sure to tell him you asked about him,” she responded waspishly, cutting her gaze to the small Russian as she removed her overcoat. The factory was kept cold due to the temperature-sensitive nature of what was housed here, but Ella burned on the inside. Fear, rage, and love threatened to choke her. She wished Brody was here, but he was back with Endgame. She’d forced him back to the team and now bemoaned her choice. He’d been a rock for her, a link to her team, safety, when she hadn’t deserved it.
Segorski smiled, which brought Ella back to her present. She shuddered, suddenly wishing she hadn’t removed her coat. Segorski was all teeth and no soul. The pistol resting in a holster on her thigh soothed her. Segorski had accompanied her here to Dresden’s factory on the outskirts of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the intention of counting his shipment prior to payment. Normally, this was a duty reserved for Ella, as she’d worked herself into a position of trust with Dresden. But Segorski didn’t trust Dresden. One of the only men Ella knew who had told Dresden that to his face and lived to tell the tale. Ella wondered if Segorski understood he stayed alive not because Dresden was scared of him, but because Dresden still had use for him.
Segorski moved closer to her and ran a hand down her arm. “Perhaps now we can become better acquainted.”
Not a question, a statement.
She turned her head and stared at him, saying nothing.
Segorski was still smiling, but the expression slipped when he realized Ella wasn’t. The Russian cleared his throat and then his eyes changed, slitting as his face went red. “I’ll have you.” He breathed in deeply and smoothed his gray hair back from his face. “Dresden can only protect you for so long.”
Ella found his statement humorous, but her face remained blank—as empty as the heart inside her chest. Dresden didn’t give a shit about protecting Ella. She was a means to an end.
“The product is through those doors. Count the vials, transfer the money, call your men in, and take possession. I don’t have time for small talk, Segorski.”
“One day you will,” he promised.
As Segorski strutted to the containment room, Ella thought over how she’d manipulated Dresden into his current position of extending her a measure of trust.
Oh, he watched every move she made, but when she’d handed over Allie Redding with no hesitation a year ago, she’d begun a long journey toward becoming integral to Dresden’s operations. She still didn’t know the structure of his conglomerate—you had to be his right or left hand to have access to that—but she was close to the inner sanctum, and she was willing to do whatever was necessary to gain that information.
She owed Dresden. She owed him a bullet to the temple. But not until she knew how to take down his entire organization. Cutting off the head wouldn’t kill the
snake in this instance. The bastard had put a system of checks and balances in place that rivaled the U.S. government. There was something behind all that paranoia. Ella was going to find out what that was.
Dresden’s operation made Al-Qaeda and ISIS look like poverty-stricken amateurs. The fact that the bastard was one of America’s own—born and bred in New York City, no less—was just another reason to take him out.
But for Ella, this was much more personal. Yes, Dresden had killed innocents, two of her Endgame teammates included, and he was responsible for arming most of the terrorists and warmongering monsters on nearly every continent on earth. His biggest mistake? Aiming for Jude Dagan.
And Ella was going to make him pay for it.
Every emotion she’d trapped inside herself for the last year bubbled up. Jude would never know it, but he’d taken every step in the last year with her—in her heart and mind.
And he was right outside now. So damn close she ached with it.
“It’s all here. The transfer is made. Confirm it.” Segorski’s high-pitched voice pulled Ella from her musings.
She pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress and hit a preprogrammed button.
“It’s done,” the person on the other end answered her unspoken question. The money had been transferred into Dresden’s accounts.
She hung up and nodded to Segorski. “Enjoy your death dealing, Segorski.”
He smiled that reptilian smile again, only this time Ella smiled too. She knew something Segorski didn’t. Ella had contaminated his entire shipment of ricin powder two days ago. She’d raised the temperature of the poison to over a hundred degrees Celsius by placing burners under the metal containers holding the vials. She had cooked it so much that the ricin had been inactivated.
She wouldn’t be able to stop the bombs Segorski would likely use in his quest to disperse the powder, but at least the ricin itself wasn’t going to kill thousands. He had aims to cement Russia’s incursion into the Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine, along with Crimea and all of its precious oil, was ripe for the taking, and Mother Russia was making her move.
