Running the Risk

by Lea Griffith

  “I missed you too, babe.”

  His eyes flared, the black depths no longer cold, but heated, like her stomach.

  “How’s the team?” she ventured.

  “For the most part, they’re good. We lost four teammates in one fell swoop. It took us all a few months to find our ground. King got pissed before the rest of us…went hunting. Rook and Vivi, Knight, Chase, and Black all entered back into the fray shortly after King. It took me a while longer,” he told her but said nothing more.

  Her chest ached at his words. “How’s Tia Rosa?” Ella asked, choosing safer ground.

  “She’s older. When she found out you’d died”—Jude choked a bit on that word—“she grieved for a few months too. But the old lady is tough. She’s lost her husband, and her children are all gone. All she had was me and, by extension of me, you. Yeah, it took her a minute too, but she’s doing well now.”

  Ella nodded. “We’re in the Sangre de Cristos, aren’t we?”

  “Yep.”

  “How long have you had this place?”

  “Few years. Place was finished right before I met you, but I never had the opportunity to bring you out here before… Well, you know.” Jude shrugged and took another pull of his Corona. His bowl was empty.

  So was Ella’s. “I need another beer,” she said. “You?”

  He nodded, and Ella grabbed two more beers, handing him one. “Let’s clean up later.”

  He stood and walked with her back to the den. They sat across the coffee table from each other. It seemed instinctive to keep that distance. She couldn’t tell him what she needed to if he was touching her.

  They sat in silence for long moments. Jude finished his second beer and started a fire in the huge stone fireplace that dominated the southern wall of the cabin. When it was roaring and the heat had staved off the chill in the air, Ella took a deep breath.

  Jude leaned against the back of the opposite couch and waited, his gaze hooded but locked and loaded on Ella.

  This was going to be so damn hard.

  “Just start somewhere, Ella. It’ll come as it comes,” Jude said gruffly.

  Always, he cared for her. Even when he knew what she had to say was going to hurt him.

  “The Piper approached me about four months after I joined Endgame.” Her opening foray fell like bullets into the silence of the room. A log fell in the fireplace and popped, sending sparks outside the grate. Jude didn’t move. Ella didn’t either.

  Instead, she locked her eyes on his and drew strength from him.

  “He had concerns and information about Horace Dresden and some underground society comprised of influential leaders who were looking to take over the world—real Illuminati-type stuff.” Ella glanced at the fire. Hearing her own words, she would have laughed had she not seen proof that what the Piper had described was very much a truth. They weren’t Illuminati; they were much, much worse. “He had Endgame hot on Dresden’s heels, but there was something he knew that he hadn’t shared with the team yet. Dresden was a lynchpin. He was the head of his own organization, but he was also a key into that mysterious group the Piper kept hearing about. So he determined that he needed someone inside Dresden’s organization.

  “The Piper approached me shortly after Dresden went after Vivi. He told me he had inside information that Dresden was coming for everyone in Endgame, and he was going to start with you. He said that the only way I could protect you was to insert myself into Dresden’s organization and divert his attention.”

  “Goddamn him,” Jude bit out. He wasn’t lounging against the back of the couch anymore. He was sitting upright, muscles tight, hands fisted.

  “I fell hook, line, and sinker. All I could see, all I could hear, was that Dresden was coming for you, and I had the opportunity to stop him. I jumped in with both feet,” she admitted.

  “Goddamn you too,” Jude said harshly.

  She held up a hand. “I can’t do this if you’re going to do that. I need you to listen to me, Jude. Reserve your judgment until the end, okay?”

  He nodded, but she could tell it cost him a lot. Poor man. He’d already paid too much.

  She swallowed and took a cleansing breath. “The Piper had no particular plan he’d made me aware of, had said only that I needed to be diligent, and that when the time was right, he’d call me up. I told you in Russia I had no idea that op in Beirut was meant to insert me into Dresden’s operation. And putting together everything now, I don’t think the Piper planned it that way. But once I was down, he didn’t do anything to get me out. He saw it as his way of obtaining an objective with minimal effort.”

  “He couldn’t have known Dresden wouldn’t kill you. It was too much of a risk,” Jude bit out.

  “Gray Broemig didn’t know that either, but one of his main intentions of inserting me into Endgame was to pursue Dresden. He and the Piper were making the same moves.” Ella bit her thumbnail and glanced at Jude. “I wonder if they even knew.”

  She shrugged lightly. “I do think the Piper knows a lot more than he lets on and not enough about what he doesn’t.”

  Jude breathed out roughly. “What he’s doing is borderline criminal.”

  Ella didn’t disagree. “I wondered for a long time if it wasn’t the Piper who’d given Dresden the information about our mission, but it didn’t make sense. He created Endgame. He had no reason to risk destroying you all just to insert me. Plus, I’ve looked him in the eye, and this team is his. He wouldn’t destroy what he’d built and the men and women he’d built it on. He might sacrifice an operative to the greater good, but the whole team? I don’t buy it.

  “I’ve also since found out that Loretta Bernstein most likely leaked the information to Dresden about our incursion in Beirut that night. She’d mined Gray Broemig for information, using other contacts to put pieces together. I believe she gave Dresden the information. He fired the RPG that brought us down, and the rest was just shooting fish in a barrel.”

  She winced at her comparison. A fine man had lost his life that night. Micah Samson, Jude’s best friend, had perished. Only Brody and Ella had been allowed to live.

  “Savidge shot Micah, where I couldn’t tell. I just knew he fell. He got Brody in the neck and winged me on the temple. I remember hearing you call my name in my earpiece. And I remember seeing Brody fall. But then my vision washed in red, and I was out. When I woke up, I was facedown on a dirt floor, naked and cold.”

  Jude stood and began to pace. She let him. It was hard to recount. It had to be hard to hear.

  “Dresden wasted no time allowing Savidge to break me. ‘Get them before their spine strengthens,’ he said. Savidge laughed and then clapped the manacles around my wrists. He pulled on a long chain until I hung from a bolt in the ceiling. They’d leave me hanging for hours at a time in the dark, bleeding, hungry, and cold. Then Savidge would come in, hit a lever, and lower me to the ground where I’d lie for hours more.

  “I started making marks in the ground to count the days. The sun would pierce a high window in my cell. It would travel the sky and go away. That would mark one day. By the time I had five days crossed off in the dirt, they’d begun bringing Brody into my cell.”

  She stared into the flames, feeling colder than she’d been in that cell. Memories hurt.

  “The things they did to Brody made me scream. But eventually he screamed louder. I vowed in that dirty cell that I’d watch the life leave Horace Dresden’s eyes.” She glanced at Jude, noticing his jaw was bunched and his face wore a tortured expression. “He’s mine, Jude. You may want to kill him, but it will be me who takes him.”

  Jude nodded at her demand.

  “They finally took Brody away. He lost his voice for a long time. Probably lost more than that, but he’s never said a word to me about what happened in that room, and I haven’t either until just now.” She wiped a tear away. “By the time they t
ook him away, eight days had passed. When Savidge would hit that lever, and I would fall to the ground beside Brody, I’d talk to him. I lied, Jude. Every minute I was with him, I lied to him.”

  “Look at me, Ella,” Jude demanded in a hard voice.

  She did. But the words had started, and now she couldn’t stop them.

  “I told him we would be saved. That you were coming for us, and King would be right behind you. I told him our team would get us out of that hell. But you never came,” she ended with a whisper.

  He picked her up, pulling her body to his before he sat down and arranging her in his lap. She laid her head on her chest and listened to his heartbeat.

  “Listen to me, Ella,” he ordered. He raised her head until her gaze met his. “We watched you all fall. We thought you were all lost. Then hell broke open, and we had to fight for our lives. By the time the secondary helicopter made it to us, Dresden, Savidge, and all of your bodies were gone, as if they’d never been there. We never left you. We didn’t know you were alive.”

  “But when you found out? Why didn’t you come then?” She hated that she sounded like a little child begging for an answer.

  “We didn’t know anything for sure until Loretta Bernstein showed King a video that Dresden had made of the entire thing. That was two months ago, Ella. I had heard rumors of a dark-haired woman with eyes of frost and a scar at her temple, but I thought I was chasing a ghost, baby. I had no idea you were really alive.” His voice was terrible. His pain giving it a deep, rough, mournful quality.

  “When I found out you were searching for information on me, I got scared. Brody did everything he could to throw you off the scent,” Ella said with a teary smile. “God, I had forgotten what a pit bull you can be when you catch a scent.”

  “It ripped me to pieces when I saw that video. I saw with my own eyes that you’d left breathing, and I finally had verification that the rumors I’d been chasing were true. I hated you when I watched it. How could you have not come to me as soon as Dresden let you leave?” he asked.

  She stood off his lap. It was her turn to pace. “I told you that Dresden used you as a tool, Jude. A tool to hone me. Keep me compliant. The Piper hit the nail on the head when he said Dresden was coming for you. He still is. He’ll do whatever is necessary to keep me in line, and he thinks you’re the only way to do that.”

  Jude shook his head. “Why does he want you so badly?”

  She looked at him then. “Dresden is twisted that way. He wants me because he knows that using me hurts Endgame because it hurts you. His ultimate goal is to watch each of us fall by his hand or his machinations. He’s driven, and he’s motivated by a hatred so deep it can only be personal, Jude.”

  “And now it’s personal for me,” Jude replied. “That bastard is wily, and he has information he should never have. Someone in the White House is supplying him with information.”

  A chill skated down Ella’s spine. “You know that he was on the team with Rook and Knight that went belly-up in the Hindu Kush four years ago. And at some point he’s had dealings with King. I haven’t been able to ferret that out yet.”

  Jude nodded.

  “My gut tells me Dresden’s hard-on for Endgame begins in the Kush. But he despises those three men with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns. His objective, as unattainable as it sounds, is world domination. But along the way, his driving force is to end Endgame Ops.”

  A ring sounded from another room.

  “Hold on, Ella,” Jude urged as he exited the den, returning a minute later with a sat phone to his ear. “Yeah. I get it.” Then, “I’ll ask her and call you back later.”

  He disconnected and glanced at Ella before placing the phone on the table between them.

  “That was King,” he told her. “Chase has radioed in. He’s got a doctor who was working with Doctors Without Borders in his possession.”

  “Possession?” she asked carefully.

  “Apparently, she was his objective per the Piper. Another mission within a mission, it would seem. Her name is Gabrielle Moeller. Name ring any bells?” Jude asked her, a note of betrayal in his tone.

  “No. I have no idea who that is.”

  “You don’t have any idea why the Piper wants her brought home?”

  “None. Wait, what was Chase’s original mission for the team?” she queried quickly.

  “Recon on the warlord Abrafo Nadege.”

  “Oh damn. That’s not good at all. Nadege is a killer, and he’s in bed with Dresden.”

  Jude glanced at her. “We knew he was an associate of Dresden’s. What is the relationship between the woman Chase is getting to safety and Nadege?”

  Ella shook her head, her mind whirring. “Maybe the association isn’t with Nadege, but with Dresden? Give me your laptop. Hurry, Jude!”

  He left and returned with his laptop. She opened it and got busy. Twenty minutes later, she’d managed to amass only minimal information on Gabrielle Moeller. A plastic surgeon turned trauma physician, Moeller seemed a nonentity.

  And then Ella saw a picture that added another piece to the puzzle.

  “Look at this picture,” she said to Jude.

  “Just two women in graduation caps and gowns,” he replied with a shrug.

  “This,” she said, pointing to Moeller, “is Gabrielle.”

  His brows lowered. “And?”

  “The other woman… Read her name for me so I don’t think I’m imagining it.”

  “Anna Beth Caine,” he read from the old newspaper clipping.

  “Damn,” Ella whispered. “That’s not good.”

  “What is it, Ella?”

  “That woman? Anna Beth Caine? She’s Horace Dresden’s former fiancée.”

  “I hate to keep repeating myself here…and?”

  “She’s also related to a man named Noah Caine,” Ella said softly.

  “The Piper,” Jude stated and hung his head.

  “When your operative took me from Dresden’s house, I left Anna Beth behind. Dresden has Anna Beth Caine, Jude. She’s locked in the same cell I was locked in, and though she wasn’t in as bad a shape as I was, her fortune could turn any minute…possibly already has.”

  Jude’s face went hard and cold. “Dresden has the Piper’s daughter.”

  Though he’d not asked a question, she still responded. “Yes.”

  “There’s something else I need to tell you, Ella. Harrison Black tracked Anton Segorski to a flat in Russia. He’s bugged down and not moving. No one has seen the prime minister in four days. We could very well be the last ones to have seen him alive.”

  “Dresden doesn’t suffer fools well. Segorski is a small player, but his political machinations helped put Crimea’s oil rights into Dresden’s hands so the bastard could bargain with it. I can’t believe Dresden would knock off the prime minister though. He wanted his money too badly. No, it just doesn’t make sense, unless…”

  “Tell me, Ella. Unless what?”

  “Unless it was never about the money.”

  Jude hissed in a breath. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if Dresden didn’t need the money, he had another fish on the hook all along. That oil will net him enough money to do what he’s always wanted—effectively rule the world. He’ll be the single richest entity on the globe. Richer than any sovereign nation, richer than Croesus. And that much money would allow him to control everything, Jude. Everything.”

  “Who do you think the fish is?”

  “I don’t think it’s a who. I think it’s a group of whos.”

  It must have hit him then. “No way, Ella. You’re talking treason. There’s no way someone, or a group of someones, would sell out their own countries for money.”

  “Remember me telling you about that mysterious group the Piper was always talking about?”

 
; Horror masked Jude’s face. “No. I can’t believe it.”

  “What if people in the White House are involved with this group? I don’t have enough yet. Let me search. I need to talk to Vivi,” she told him, but it came out a request. “I think at this point we need to start considering that the Piper is either onto this group and playing a dangerous game, or he’s as thick with them as Dresden.”

  Jude nodded. “Give Brody a call while you’re at it, okay? King said the man’s champing at the bit to talk to you.”

  “That’s good news. Give me a few minutes to talk to him, and I’ll explain why,” she informed him.

  Ella glanced up and found Jude right in front of her. He’d always moved like a big jungle cat—stealthy and silent. He reached for her face, cupping her cheek in his big palm and thumbing the dent in her chin.

  She’d always hated that dent. Jude had always loved it.

  “A truth?” he asked.

  She gazed up at him, her answer on her face.

  “I don’t think you betrayed your team.”

  Relief washed through her.

  “But we still need to talk about what you did do, Ella. You should have come to me immediately and let me help you. You didn’t trust me, trust us, enough to come to me, and that hurts, Ella. It hurts bad.”

  She sank her teeth into her lower lip. That small bite of pain centered her. “I messed up. I’m trying to correct it, Jude.”

  “I need you to promise me you won’t leave, Ella. I need you to go all in with me, with your team.” His voice stroked along her nerves. Jude was an excellent interrogator. He could cajole and get information and promises out of men even when they knew they were dead men walking.

  Could she make that promise though? In her mind, the only solution was for her to go back to Dresden. He would make it hell for her, but that was the only way she was going to be able to get the information Endgame needed to take him down. And it wasn’t as simple as a bullet to the temple—Dresden was only one head. The entire organization could have many, and all of their organizations had to be dismantled.