by Lea Griffith
“This is Anna Beth Caine,” Dresden said with a small, evil laugh. “She was once my fiancée.”
That name… Something about that name niggled at Ella.
“You’re probably wondering why she’s here, right? Is her name familiar?” Dresden asked as he stepped behind Ella and rested his chin on her shoulder.
Like lovers, she thought. He was treating her like a lover.
“I don’t like it when you don’t answer me, Ella.”
“I’m not wondering why she’s here,” Ella pushed out of a suddenly dry throat.
“No?” Dresden laughed. “I’ll tell you anyway. She’s here because Svetlana Markov tried to undermine me by giving your Piper information that she thought would break me. So I decided to break Svetlana first.”
Svetlana Markov’s whispered dying words floated through Ella’s mind. Something about a sister…
“She didn’t say anything to me,” Ella said, denying what Dresden obviously already knew. Did the bastard know everything?
“We won’t talk about your propensity to lie to me right now. I want you to concentrate on the woman kneeling so beautifully on the floor in front of us. Are you watching her, Ella?”
Ella nodded.
“Svetlana Markov’s real name wasn’t Svetlana. It was Cameron. She and her sister, Anna Beth, are—or in Cameron’s case were—daughters of a prominent American military leader who has made it his number one priority to destroy me.” A pause, a draw of breath, and then he continued. “Can you imagine trying to destroy me?” He laughed then, sinisterly and softly. “Anyway, I digress. Anna Beth was at one time my beloved fiancée, her father a pawn in my pocket. She loved me unconditionally until she couldn’t love me anymore. It’s a sad truth that I tend to break my toys.”
Caine…the name… The woman couldn’t be… “What have you done?” Ella whispered in horror.
“Svetlana—excuse me, Cameron—decided to try to hide her sister from me. Cameron and her father did their best, but ultimately, well, I’m me and I know everything. Cameron decided she would try to hide Anna Beth from me. Nobody leaves me. Nobody hides from me.” His whispered edicts had every hair on Ella’s body standing on end.
She didn’t know how to deescalate this situation. Dresden was cold and methodical. This woman’s torture was a means to an end for him. Ella didn’t doubt his sanity. The bastard simply had no soul. He’d sold it to the devil to attain power. The woman on the floor had once been important to him, and she was Svetlana—um, Cameron—Markov’s sister. Now? She was a tool. And today she’d be used to bring Ella back in line. For Dresden, it was just that simple.
The truth circled Ella’s mind… Noah Caine’s daughter. So was the woman who’d died in Ella’s arms in Russia.
Noah Caine. The Piper.
Goddamn it.
“It looks like you’ve won, Dresden.” Ella pointed to the woman. “She’s right there at your mercy, just like you like them.”
He smoothed his hair back and straightened his jacket. “Yes. Yes she is. How does it feel to know the bastard that created you, created Endgame Ops, has such a deep tie to me? God, you and your team are pathetic. Put her back into her cage, Ella. Do that for me, will you?”
Ella nodded and walked to the woman, stooping to help her up. The woman was smaller than Ella and lighter. She rose with Ella’s assistance, though it seemed a painful transition if her gasp was anything to go by.
Ella glanced at the woman and was surprised to find her deep-green gaze locked on her. Inside them was acceptance and, strangely enough, a clarity that spoke volumes about her mental health. She wasn’t insane with pain or torture. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
Ella would save this woman. She vowed it right then. But first she had to get her out of Dresden’s line of sight.
“Prepare yourself,” Ella said so softly that her words went no farther than the woman.
She closed her eyes and did as Ella instructed.
Ella pulled the woman’s arms behind her body as gently as she could. She was a pawn. Another piece on the chessboard.
How much longer until an endgame in this seemingly endless game with their lives?
“Put her up,” Dresden spat out.
Ella pushed lightly on the woman, who walked to the room. “I’ll be back for you,” she whispered before she turned and closed the door behind her.
Before the solid oak door latched, Ella heard the woman say, “I’ll be ready.”
Then Ella locked the door and turned around. Dresden was right there in her face.
She didn’t have time to brace herself for his fist. It connected with a snap, and she fell to the floor, shock coating her tongue, the blow to her cheek rendering her insensate for a precious second. Ella rode the wave of pain that threatened to carry her down.
“If you betray me, I will kill you, Ella. But first I’ll make you watch as I gut your man. Would you like that?”
He didn’t say anything else, just hovered over her until she finally opened her eyes. He wasn’t even out of breath from his exertion.
Yet, the sanity remained in his eyes. The calculation absolute and so very real she wondered if she could touch it.
But Ella was hurting now. All she wanted to do was curl into a ball and weep.
“Get up and clean yourself. We’ll speak tomorrow,” he ordered and then turned and calmly walked away.
“You won’t be able to save me. You can’t even save yourself,” the woman behind the door whispered.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Ella said to the woman. She pulled herself up off the floor, wincing at the ringing in her head. She pushed the pain down deep and made her way up the lower stairs, her mind clearing with every step.
Then she made her way slowly up the grand staircase and to her room on the second floor of the huge mansion. Maids and hired help passed her, but none of them looked at her, avoiding any repercussions of helping someone Dresden had gone out of his way to hurt.
Ella ignored them too, instead focusing on what she’d learned tonight. It was information that threw everything the Piper had asked her to do out of perspective.
She concentrated on what she knew. Dresden had taken over this property from a well-to-do Ukrainian businessman who found himself no longer needing a place to sleep since the hole Dresden had dug and placed him in suited him quite nicely in his deceased state.
Dresden had taken refuge in Ukraine. The Russians wanted him. The United States would never stop hunting him, but the Ukrainians? Ah yes, the Ukrainians wanted his power and wealth because it seemed not even the Russians knocking at their door would cross Dresden.
It was all a huge game to Dresden. Because even as he played false with the Ukrainians, he sold biochemical weapons to the Russians. Or at least he sold them to Segorski. A Russian who wanted the Crimean Peninsula and all the oil that lay within it.
Ella slowly made her way to her room and walked to the balcony that overlooked a small, picturesque meadow. A stream cut through the middle of the field, and the moon reflected off the dark water. She took several cleansing breaths and wondered how in the hell she’d managed to survive this long.
“Ma’am?” A tentative voice sounded from the door of her room.
Ella turned and saw a woman standing there, hands folded in front of her, dark auburn hair in a severe bun, the lace apron she wore confirming she was a maid. “Yes?”
“Do you need anything?” the maid asked, and Ella swore she heard another question in the woman’s voice.
Where did she start? A broken laugh escaped Ella. “No. I’m good.”
The woman nodded and without warning grabbed Ella by the arms.
Ella tried to pivot, but the woman was stronger than she looked. Soldier strong.
Surely they wouldn’t…
Oh God, what had Endgame done? El
la could only pray they weren’t coming for Dresden. Or worse, herself.
Ella twisted and backed away. “Who sent you?” she asked, her voice nearly silent for fear of rousing other staff or, worse, Dresden.
The maid’s head rose swiftly. She was caught and knew it. “Jude,” she admitted with a small grimace.
Damn it! Damn Jude and his interference!
“Listen to me,” Ella hissed. “Dresden will kill you if he discovers what you’re doing here. I can’t believe Jude attempted this!”
The woman shrugged as if Ella’s words didn’t matter a whit. She pulled a square of fabric from a pocket in her maid outfit and shoved the fabric into Ella’s face.
Ella’s vision swam immediately and she sagged, the bitterness of defeat nearly as heavy as the sweet taste of the drug coating her damaged tongue. For the second time within the span of a few days, she’d been taken. Damn it.
Ella lost her ability to fight, her limbs going numb even as her vision cleared. She wondered who the woman was to Jude even as she cursed the wayward thought in the middle of this clusterfuck of a situation. She had to be here. She had to be accessible to Dresden, or everything she’d sacrificed would be for naught.
And now there was Anna Beth Caine…
She tried to plead with her eyes for the woman to leave and let her be, but the woman was a force.
In less than a minute, Ella was wrapped in the duvet cover and shoved into a laundry cart. She was growing more and more tired, realizing that whatever she’d been given was meant to paralyze and eventually knock out the recipient.
Jude had warned her, and as the maid-slash-operative working for or with Jude dumped the contents of the laundry cart into the chute, Ella wondered where the hell she was headed.
Because none of this was good.
Not at all.
Chapter 12
Jude wanted to rip Horace Dresden into tiny pieces, rebuild him, and do it all over again. The right side of Ella’s face was bruised. Once he’d cleaned her up, he realized nothing was broken. He’d checked her over completely, not sure she hadn’t been tortured. The rest of her body appeared untouched. She’d taken a punch from a man around Jude’s size. Dresden. Jude knew it, and he wanted to kill that motherfucker.
Once the laundry truck Georgia had used to spirit Ella away from Dresden’s had arrived at the airfield, Jude had loaded Ella onto the small charter plane they’d then taken to Moldova. From there, he loaded her onto another larger charter, and they’d flown to the States. Each charter had owed Jude a favor, and he’d called them in with zero hesitation. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know his plans, so he’d not involved Vivi or his other Endgame teammates.
Had they been there, Jude could have taken his shot at Dresden. Without their involvement, he couldn’t risk busting in there like a one-man army. That could result in damage to Ella. So he’d made the decision to sneak her out, knowing she wouldn’t go without being disabled. Georgia had signed on with Jude. She’d also owed him a favor or two. When she dropped Ella off, she’d complained about his woman’s right hook and even had a shiner to match the one coloring Ella’s face. Georgia had assured him she hadn’t harmed Ella too much, that the mark on Ella’s face wasn’t from her.
He didn’t know if Dresden would be able to track them, but he knew once the bastard realized Ella was gone, he’d guess Jude had her and was taking her to the United States.
She’d roused once on the flight from outside Atlanta to the abandoned airstrip in Texas. Jude had knocked her back out, feeling only fleeting remorse when her confused gaze had met his and then gone blank as she fell back into the arms of Morpheus. Then he’d driven eight hours through Texas to the mountains of New Mexico.
He pushed off the doorjamb and entered the massive bedroom, moving to the side of the bed she lay on—the bed he’d had handcrafted when he’d had this cabin built almost two years ago. This had been designed to be his escape. He’d brought her here because no one but his tia Rosa knew about this place. They were as safe as he could make them because the only other person who knew about his home away from home was dead.
He’d purchased the land under a shell corporation Micah had helped him set up for them both. Micah had built in Alaska. Jude had built in the Cimarron Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico. He’d hunted these woods with his great-uncle as a child. Some of Jude’s happiest memories had been created in these mountains.
And now she was here.
It had snowed last night—not the light, fluffy stuff, but the heavy, wet snow of a fall storm—and Jude had had a bitch of a time getting the dilapidated Range Rover up the pass to his home. Once he’d gotten them there safely, he’d taken Ella inside, removed everything but her bra and panties, and placed her in the huge California king-size bed made entirely of the cottonwoods that dominated the landscape outside his windows.
She’d wake soon, and then he’d deal with what he’d done and what had been done to her. But until then…
He allowed his gaze to roam over her features. Even with the black-and-blue marks covering her face, she was hands down the most beautiful woman Jude had ever seen. He knew that under the bruising, her ivory skin was tinted with freckles across the bridge of her aquiline nose. Her almond-shaped eyes were closed, and he missed the cold frost of her gray eyes. Eyes that could turn to molten silver when she was in the throes of passion. Long, black lashes lay like fans on her pale cheeks, and her dark-brown eyebrows were gently curved over her eyes.
His gaze traveled south, over her thinner upper lip and deliciously full lower lip. Those lips could flatten in anger, lift in a soul-destroying smile, or open in ecstasy. He stopped when he came to the dent in her chin and licked his lips. She would always tempt him. Jude wondered if he’d ever be able to purge her. The need that had simmered under his skin from the moment he’d seen her almost two years ago continued to beat at him, heating him from the inside out, making him fist his hands.
Then his gaze traveled over the scar at her temple, and rage lit him. He pulled on a single thread of his control, finding other threads and winding them together until he could breathe without the fury.
Still he stood there and watched her breathe, ironically realizing that’s all he’d wanted for over a year—nothing more than to be able to watch her breathe.
Of course, that had been when he’d thought her dead. And she wasn’t dead. Not physically anyway.
He pulled his gaze from her, assured she was resting easily, and walked to the chair beside the wide bank of windows facing the southeast ridges of Baldy Mountain. Snow blanketed the top of the mountain, and the trees swayed in the wind of the continuing storm overhead. A pale-gray sky taunted him. It would weep snow again soon.
Could he survive in her presence for as long as he knew it would take to force her to give him information? Could he save her from herself?
He ran a hand down his face and tensed. She shifted on the bed, and everything in Jude went on alert. He heard her rise to a sitting position before she stilled. How would she play it?
Her breathing didn’t change from slow and even. But Jude was a hunter by nature, and he recognized the fear she was giving off in waves. He turned and simply watched her. He stood beside the window in the shadows of the intentionally darkened room, and unless she turned her head, she wouldn’t see him.
Could she feel him?
He wanted to know, but he waited.
“You have to let me go,” she said, her voice rough and low.
Jude didn’t respond.
She turned her head, finding him unerringly, her gaze narrowed and dark. “You don’t know what you’re doing here, Dagan.”
Anger rose again. Always, it was the anger now. He stepped from the shadows and turned the chair around, sitting down and crossing one leg over the opposite knee. “Why don’t you tell me then, Ella?”
“Le
t me go,” she demanded, her voice rising, the notes of the fear she was obviously feeling ringing strident in her tone.
“I’ve tried.” He answered her demand with the truth. He had. Once he’d found out she was alive, he’d gotten rip-roaring drunk and tried to drown his pain. Then he’d woken up with a bitch of a headache and a resolution. He would find her and force her to make him understand why she’d done what she’d done.
“Try harder,” she whispered. “For both of us, try harder.”
He rubbed his chest before he could check the action. She was scared. And not of Jude. What did she know? What the hell was she doing for the Piper? “Do you need some water?”
She shook her head, the nearly black strands of her hair falling to curtain her face from his view. “I need you to let me go, Dagan.”
“My name,” he said in a gruff voice.
“I can’t,” she returned, voice breaking at the end.
He sat up, both feet on the floor, fisted hands on his knees. “Use. My. Name.”
“Please…” If it was possible, her head hung lower.
This was the beginning. If he was going to break her, he’d have to start now. “Please…who?” He kept his voice low, almost a whisper.
She straightened then, giving another half-hearted tug on the soft leather cuffs attached to her wrists. “I won’t beg. Never again.”
He stood at that. He’d never made her. “Who made you beg, El?”
Jude winced as he automatically switched to the shortened version of her name. It was intimate and something he’d fallen back into far too easily.
She turned away from him, staring at the opposite wall and refusing to answer.
The fury that had been his best friend since the night she’d died rose again, swift and supernova hot. “Who made you beg, Ella?”
She took a deep breath and met his gaze. “Let me go.”
He shook his head and stood, walking to stand right beside the bed. She shrank from him, and that also enraged him. “When you tell me what’s going on, then I’ll let you go…maybe.”
