Twin Targets

by Jessica Andersen

  Seeing no signs of resistance, he beckoned the others up and over. As planned, they set eyehooks and climbing ropes near the edge, in case they needed a quick exit. Once that was done, they slipped into the forest of stunted evergreens, walking single file and keeping a sharp watch for hostile company.

  Jimmy tracked their course and progress on a handheld GPS unit. They were still a half mile away from the main compound when John heard a noise coming from up ahead.

  Senses alert, he stopped and gestured for the others to fade into the surrounding trees.

  He strained to pinpoint the noise. He’d thought…there! He pointed off to the east, where a thicker stand of taller trees shaded the landscape. Michael nodded. He’d heard the footsteps, too. Moving silently, the marksman readied his weapon, knowing they couldn’t let an alarm get back to the main compound.

  Not yet, anyway.

  The sounds grew louder as the guard approached, making straight for Michael’s position and moving fast.

  John’s heart rate increased at the thought that they’d already been discovered, but he didn’t move or make a sound to indicate the suspicion, instead tensing as the noises angled away, then looped around suddenly, headed straight for his position.

  Without time to pull his own weapon, and afraid that the screening trees nearby would foul Michael’s shot, John didn’t stop to think.

  He acted.

  Lunging out of his scrubby concealment, he caught the guard in a flying tackle, clapping a hand across the bastard’s mouth and slamming him to the ground.

  Working on icy logic and instinct rather than the mores of civilization, he had his combat knife out and was a heartbeat away from the guard’s throat when he realized two things that had him pausing the final blow.

  One, the guy wasn’t big enough to be one of Tiberius’s guards, and two, the guy wasn’t a guy.

  It was Sydney.

  The realization flared through his gut in a burst of heat and anger that came straight from the place he’d locked away for the duration of the op. He spat a curse and rolled aside, rising to his feet before he turned back and looked down at her.

  She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the day—and night—before, and she had a faint bruise along her jaw. Her face and arms were scratched and bleeding, and she was breathing hard, as though she’d run all the way from the mansion. Her eyes were worried and scared and faintly defiant, as though she already knew what he was going to say, and didn’t plan to back down.

  Her eyes locked on his. “He said he was going to kill you if I didn’t go with his people,” she said, her voice low and rasping with the effort of her breaths. “At the hotel. There was a sniper outside the window. I saw the laser dot on your forehead.”

  “Don’t expect me to thank you for saving my ass,” John said coolly. “You should’ve woken me and let me do my damn job.” He paused. “Did you give him the password?”

  She met him stare for stare. “No, but there’s something more. He’s wired the island to blow. You’ve got maybe twenty-five minutes or so left on the countdown.”

  John’s gut iced. “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  “And then he just, what? Let you go?” He scoffed in disbelief.

  “I went out the window.” Her voice went low. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  Yeah, he thought, but sometimes the truth isn’t enough. Sometimes there’s got to be trust, too.

  And that was something they apparently didn’t have.

  Unable to respond to her, unable to figure out how, he turned away from her, gesturing for the others to get her up. “She comes with us.”

  He heard her quiet sob as he walked away, but he didn’t turn back. He’d already given her one too many chances.

  Whether or not she was working for Tiberius, caring for her was a liability he couldn’t afford right now. He had a job to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  Silent tears stung Sydney’s eyes as she stumbled along in John’s wake. She couldn’t stop looking at him, at the tense set of his shoulders and the uncompromising line of his square jaw, couldn’t stop remembering the night before, when she’d run her hands over those same broad shoulders and tasted the skin along that square jaw.

  Though she hadn’t gone to bed with him expecting a future, she’d hoped for more than the night. Then Tiberius had called. Damn him. And damn John for not trusting her enough to hear her out, for not caring enough to try to see her side of things.

  The rising burn of anger dried her tears. Her legs ached from her flight from the mansion and trembled with the knowledge that she was headed back there yet again. She knew John would keep her as safe as possible—he had a core of honor, whether he trusted her or not—but she couldn’t shake the terrible knowledge that none of this was going as planned.

  Or rather, none of it was going according to their plan. She suspected they were playing right into Tiberius’s hands, because now if he captured the team, he’d not only get another chance to strip the password from her, he’d also have the opportunity to rid himself of a major foe in Sharpe and his team.

  Or he’d just take off and hope they blew up with the island, because it sure didn’t seem like John had believed her on that front, either.

  Run! she wanted to say. Let’s go, let’s get out of here. But she didn’t, because he wasn’t listening to her.

  She could only trudge along behind him, wishing she’d done things differently, wishing that she’d never taken Tiberius’s damn job in the first place, or that the messages she’d managed to sneak off the island had been to the authorities rather than to Celeste.

  But wishing for something was never enough to make it happen. If that were the case, her parents would’ve returned when they were children, Celeste would be healed and John would’ve known instinctively how to trust her.

  Unfortunately, it seemed like all the wishes in the world wouldn’t be enough to make that happen.

  “We’re almost there,” Jimmy whispered from behind her, his voice almost soundless.

  John heard him, though, and brought the team to a halt. Michael covered Sydney—his expression apologetic—while the others had a quick confab. After a minute, John gestured to the sharpshooter. “You two stay here. We’re going to split up, find someplace to stash her and do a quick recon. When I get back, you can—”

  A crack of gunfire cut him off, the bullet splintering the tree to his immediate left.

  In the next moment, all hell broke loose.

  The teammates dove for cover while Sydney stared, slow to react from the shock of it all, the strangeness of what her life had come to.

  “Get her down!” someone shouted, but the voice seemed to come from far away, muted beneath the chatter of gunfire.

  “Damn it, Sydney, get down!” John hit her with a flying tackle, grabbing her by the waist and dragging them both to the ground.

  Instead of landing flat atop her, he twisted them in midair so they landed on their sides facing each other, with his arms looped around her waist and their noses nearly touching. The hard metal of his gun pressed into her, but she barely noticed the discomfort. She was caught in his eyes, which blazed with fury and maybe something else. Something hotter and less certain, something that made her think that maybe he’d heard her, after all. Maybe a small part of him believed her.

  He didn’t speak, though. Instead, he scrambled to a low crouch and joined his teammates in returning fire.

  But the counterattack was too little, too late. Sharpe’s team was surrounded and outgunned. Within minutes, Tiberius’s guards had overrun their position. They quickly disarmed the team members, stripped their gear away and secured them with zip ties.

  They did Sharpe first, and they weren’t gentle. Tears tracked down Sydney’s cheeks as he stared at her.

  She couldn’t read his expression, but guilt had her blurting, “I didn’t lead them to you. I didn’t tell them anything.”

  He didn’t get a
chance to answer—even if he’d been planning to—because the guards who’d tied him yanked him to his feet and prodded him with his rifle butt. “Shut up and move.”

  As the guards herded them to the main house, John and Sydney wound up walking near each other. He bent low so he could whisper in her ear, “I believe you, about that at least. I just wish you’d trusted me enough to let me take care of Tiberius. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Tears stung Sydney’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Keep moving.” The guards shoved her ahead of the others, and then when they reached the house, hustled her down the hallway to the right, away from the others. Ignoring her struggles and panicked shouts, they pushed her through the door to her old quarters and locked her in.

  “John,” she shouted. “John!” She didn’t see where they’d taken the others, but feared she could guess.

  Upstairs. To the security hub.

  HE HEARD HER CALL his name, heard her voice break on the scream, and nearly tore into the guards in an effort to get to her, but he forced aside the emotions in favor of logic. Barely.

  It wouldn’t help if he got himself shot in the process of getting to her. He had to bide his time. Work with his team. Think it through.

  The emotion had to exist alongside logic.

  Somewhere along the line he’d started to realize that the things he was feeling for her didn’t have to weaken him. Far from it. Caring for her made him stronger, made him want to tear into his foe to get to her, to protect her. He needed to temper the urge with rationality, though, or he’d start making mistakes.

  The guards split the team up, with three armed men marching Michael, Jimmy and Drew in one direction, while two others prodded John through a doorway.

  They locked the door behind him, and the clank of metal on metal sounded very loud. Very final.

  He found himself in the security hub, a large room with one wall completely given over to a flat screen, on which a shifting array of televised images showed most of the island. A bank of desks faced the displays and held computer stations manned by more of the stone-faced guards.

  The agent inside John, the one that had ruled his thoughts and actions for so many years, automatically cataloged the men and armaments in the room—six men, two with obvious weapons—and mapped out his options for escape…slim to none.

  He was in the middle of cobbling together a desperate plan of attack when Tiberius stepped in through a door in the far wall, and the game changed.

  Wearing a mustard-colored tweed jacket and darker corduroy pants, the self-proclaimed “opportunistic businessman” looked even more like a college professor than he did in his file photos. Unlike so many of the criminals John had sought—and brought to justice—over the years, his eyes weren’t dead or cold, or even angry. Instead, he carried a faintly amused, faintly downtrodden air that made him seem completely unremarkable.

  That was one of the things that made him so incredibly dangerous, John knew. He appeared so trustworthy and nonthreatening on the surface. It was only when the layers started to peel back that the real evil became apparent, and by then, it was usually too late for the innocent victim to escape.

  And despite the gray areas she’d strayed into, Sydney was one of them. An innocent. The blood of the dead wasn’t on her hands, John finally acknowledged to himself when he’d put the guilt on her for far too long.

  The dead belonged entirely to Tiberius and his peculiar brand of mad genius.

  Tiberius stayed halfway across the room, keeping the guards between John and himself, and gave the agent a good, long look. “I don’t have time to waste with power plays and negotiations, Agent Sharpe, so here’s the deal. You get your girlfriend to turn over the password, and you two and the rest of your team are free to get back in your not-so-stealthy boat and head back to the mainland ahead of the blast that I’m sure dear Sydney told you about.”

  What makes you think she’d do anything I ask? John wanted to say, because she was nothing if not headstrong…which was one of the things he respected about her.

  No, damn it. It was one of the things he loved about her. He loved her. There, he’d said it, if only in his head.

  Now he had to get them both out of there so he could say it aloud.

  He pretended to consider the deal, though he was pretty sure the other man knew it was an act. Finally, he said, “What sort of assurance do I have that you’ll actually keep your word and let us go?”

  “None whatsoever. It’s not like you’d believe me if I gave my word, so why should I bother?” Tiberius lifted a shoulder. “Let’s put it this way—once I have the password, I’m out of here. I won’t be back to this island—hell, I’m thinking of being done with the States for a while. Things are getting far too complicated with you around.”

  “Which is a perfect reason to kill me. Isn’t that your usual MO?”

  “I don’t like being predictable.” But something shifted in his eyes—game or not? Was the bastard lying, or did he want John to think he was? Glancing at his watch, Tiberius said, “I’m going to put you in with her now. You’ve got five minutes to get me that password, or the deal’s off the table.”

  John barely heard the end of his response, though. His brain was locked on his first few words.

  I don’t like being predictable. It was what Grace had said, time and again, while working the computer banks in the Hoover building or over at Quantico. It had been a joke, because she’d been solid and dependable, and rarely broke pattern without checking with him first.

  Or so it had seemed.

  The moment the suspicion took root, it made far too much sense. He’d been too ready to blame the safe house attack on Sydney. Then, when the others had convinced him the bogus e-mail could’ve come from anywhere, he’d instinctively looked outside the team for suspects.

  Now he realized it could just as easily have been Grace giving Tiberius the location, Grace giving him the positions of the other agents. She would’ve thought herself safe, not realizing that for whatever reason, Tiberius had decided she was expendable, that she’d be more use to him dead than alive, another layer of the game.

  John felt a punch of guilt, both that he’d blamed her death on Sydney, and that Grace hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him she was in trouble. In making himself safe from emotion, he’d made himself so unapproachable that he’d even driven away the members of his own team.

  Well, that stopped now. He was stepping up as a leader and as a man. As soon as he figured out precisely how.

  “Get going.” One of the guards jabbed John with the butt of his rifle, prodding him toward the door. Two others closed around him, weapons drawn, and the three marched him out of the room while Tiberius remained in the security hub, no doubt planning to watch and listen in on everything that John and Sydney said to one another.

  Fine, John thought. Go ahead and listen. It’s not going to be what you expect.

  The guards descended the marble stairs, boots ringing on stone, and escorted John down a long hallway with doors on either side. He tracked their progress against the blueprint inside his head and realized they were headed toward Sydney’s old quarters, which were right near the lab space.

  Something loosened inside him at the realization that she’d been stashed in relative safety, at least for the moment. But that left him not knowing where Michael, Drew and Jimmy were being kept, which could become a problem if they got free and needed to move fast.

  Because he sure as hell didn’t believe Tiberius. The moment the bastard got the password, they were all as good as dead.

  “In here.” One of the guards swiped a key card and a door swung open. The other two covered John with their weapons, making the threat clear: one wrong move and you’re a wet spot on the floor.

  But they didn’t need to worry, he didn’t intend to try anything. Not yet, anyway.

  Still, his gut was tight as he let the guards hustle him through the door, and the panel shut behind him.

&nbs
p; Sydney stood in the center of the room, cheeks stained with tears. She looked at him, eyes filled with a mixture of wariness and hope, as though afraid to trust him to believe, when he’d been so ready to turn on her before.

  He didn’t say anything, simply crossed to her, opened his arms and gathered her close. He held her tight, feeling her heart beat in time with his. Dropping his cheek to her hair, he whispered, “I’m sorry about before, in the woods. I should’ve acted different. I wasn’t mad, I swear. I didn’t think you’d led them to us, I was just—” He broke off, not even sure he could explain it to himself.

  On one level he’d been overjoyed to see her, on another, so terrified for her that he’d wanted to shake her, to hug her, to touch her all over until he was sure she was okay.

  All of those feelings had sort of logjammed together in his brain and he’d wound up doing nothing.

  “It’s okay.” Her arms snuck around his waist. “You were in agent mode. I get that.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t get it at the time, but I get it now.”

  “You’re sure?” He eased away so he could look into her tearstained face. “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah.” She used her hands to swipe at her cheeks.

  “You?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Excuse me?” The look on her face might’ve been comical under any other circumstance.

  As it was, he drew her close again, feeling their time running out as he tried to find the words, tried to let her know that he got it now, he finally understood his own heart. “I’m scared that I’m going to mess this up, that I’m going to hurt you.” He paused. “But I’m more scared by the thought of losing you. I don’t want that. I want us to be together. I want to learn how to be the man you need, because whether either of us likes it or not, you’re the woman I need. The woman I want.”

  When he paused, she said softly, “Say it.”

  He took a deep breath. “You’re the woman I love.” When his heart didn’t stop beating at the words, when the world kept going on around them and time kept passing, he let out a long breath. “I love you. Please tell me I’m not too late.”