by Liliana Hart
Elias snorted out a laugh and his chair dropped back to the floor.
“That’s a fascinating analysis,” Dante said. “I’m just being polite. You should try it.”
Her laughter caught him by surprise. “See? Snobbish,” she said in a British accent. “What you need is a woman.”
“I’ve just had one, thank you,” he said, wishing he’d sent Deacon a text message instead of coming to speak to him in person.
“TMI,” Miller said. “How come we’ve never met any of your lady friends?”
“And subject myself to this torture?” he asked her, smiling. “I’d rather go through testing again.”
Once a Gravedigger was brought back to life, there was a period of confinement and psychological testing. The serum that was administered to slow the heart during the death phase of becoming a Gravedigger was nothing compared to the serum administered during the three days of testing. It was one thing to feel your body die. It was another to feel your mind being broken, to feel yourself go crazy and wonder if you’d ever really been sane.
If a Gravedigger passed testing, it actually increased the usage of his brain. Before and after MRIs couldn’t be disputed. The only downside was that there was a possibility of not passing—meaning the mind would be broken forever and real death couldn’t come soon enough.
“Ouch,” Elias said. “Harsh.”
“We’re not insulted,” Tess said. She rubbed the small mound of her belly and looked at her husband. “I don’t mean to change the subject, but if you don’t bring that bacon and pancakes over here soon, things are going to get ugly. The baby wants bacon.”
“Right,” Deacon said, bringing platters to the table so everyone could serve themselves. “Apparently this baby is a carnivore. He wanted a rib-eye at three a.m. a couple of nights ago.” Deacon took the seat next to his wife.
“You know, Tess,” Miller said, heaping a couple of pancakes onto her own plate and dousing them with syrup, “what if you introduced Dante to your yoga instructor? Didn’t you say she recently went through a divorce?”
“Yes, but what I didn’t tell you is she also draws social security. Though I wouldn’t have put her a day past forty-five. She looks amazing.”
“I don’t know why y’all are wasting your time,” Elias said, shaking his head. “Y’all are supposed to be the intuitive ones. Can’t you see he’s still got it bad for someone from his past?”
“Oh,” Miller said, her fork stopping halfway to her mouth. She looked at Dante as if she was trying to dissect him. A lesser man would’ve squirmed under the scrutiny, but he just stared back at her, his expression blank. And then she said again, “Ohhhh.”
“No,” Dante said. “Don’t do it.”
“Too late,” Elias said with a sigh.
“I bet she was a childhood sweetheart,” Miller said. “Wait, I’ve got a better one. Maybe she was the daughter of one of your servants, and your love had to be secret because of stupid society rules. You couldn’t offer her marriage, so she ran off and married some baker, but she’s not really in love with him.”
He was amused despite himself. “You’re a very odd woman.”
“Thank you,” Miller said.
“She always thinks that’s a compliment,” Elias said. “I keep trying to tell her it’s not, but she doesn’t listen.”
“You also keep trying to tell me that you want Elvis to marry us,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been having nightmares about white sequined jumpsuits.”
“You haven’t come up with anything better,” he said. “I just want to get married. It shouldn’t be this hard.”
“It should be memorable,” Miller insisted. “We’re starting our very own story.”
“We started our story the second you slid down that muddy waterfall in the Galápagos and then kneed me in the balls the next morning. I’m just hoping that isn’t setting a precedent for the rest of our marriage.”
Everyone laughed. Dante hated to break up the jovial mood, but he had a tight schedule to keep.
“I’ve been suspended,” he said, scooping up a bite of eggs. Silence reigned around him.
“What?” Deacon demanded. “On what grounds? And why wasn’t I notified?”
“Insubordination,” he said. “Apparently Eve doesn’t care for my attitude.”
Elias snorted. “That makes zero sense. If she’s put up with my attitude all this time, she should be able to put up with yours. You’ve always been the most diplomatic of all of us.”
“Maybe it was a cumulative effect,” he said, shrugging. “She told me last night. I’m sure she’ll be in touch with you today.”
“I’m sure she will,” Deacon said, his jaw tight. “I believe I’ll be calling her first, though. She knows this is a critical time. We’re still tracing and identifying the terrorists in that airport bombing in Baltimore. We need every man we have, and I wish we had a couple more, but she’s refused my request twice now to bring in two more agents.”
The kitchen door opened and Axel came through, his broad shoulders taking up the entire space. He’d pulled his long, dark-blond hair into a messy bun on top of his head. His face was unshaved, and he only wore athletic shorts and a white undershirt. They all had pasts and losses from their former lives, but Axel had lost the most. He’d had a wife when Eve recruited him, and she’d been four months pregnant with their daughter. When she heard the news of Axel’s death, her grief had been so strong that she’d miscarried the baby.
They weren’t supposed to have anything to do with their former lives once they were reborn as Gravediggers, but Axel had kept tabs on his wife from the day he’d been released from testing. He wanted to make sure she was safe and taken care of. Dante personally thought the connection between Axel and his wife would give nothing but pain and guilt until his contract expired. Even then, there was nothing he could do about it. None of them would ever be free—really free—from their chains as Gravediggers.
Axel raised his brows and looked at each of them around the table. “I can only assume that someone died or that Eve made an appearance and I missed it.” Then he looked at Dante and said, “Damn, mate, you must have shoved her out the door on your way here. You don’t usually give up your Saturday brunch seduction unless we have a mission.”
“Bollocks,” Dante said, pushing his chair back and taking his empty plate to the sink. “The idea of a brunch seduction is bloody ludicrous. If she’s there for brunch, she’s already been seduced. And we work too bloody much for me to make it a habit of luring women back to my condo on a regular basis. And if I did, it’d be none of your bloody business.”
“Ooh,” Miller said. “You just used bloody a lot. It’s such a polite way of being angry. I wish we had something like that in America.”
“If we could get back on track,” Deacon said, “the issue is that we need Dante right now. And Eve knows it. I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking in suspending him, but I need her to change her mind.”
“Good luck with that,” Dante said.
“You got suspended?” Axel asked him. “How is that even possible?”
“Ask Eve,” he said. “I’m taking a flight out this morning. I’ve got some personal things to deal with back home and haven’t had the time.”
Deacon raised his brows. “Don’t let anyone see you. Eve always finds out. And if she’s already angry, you don’t want to make things worse. I’ll give her a call and see if I can smooth things out before you go.”
Dante nodded, but his mind was already in Dubai. It had been far too long since Simon Locke made an appearance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
London
The summer sun baked through the windshield of Liv’s black Mercedes, and despite the air-conditioning turned up full-blast, her bare shoulders stuck to the leather seat. They’d been surveilling the multimillion-dollar town house, located on one of the oldest, most expensive streets in London. It sat right in the middle of the block, tall and imposing, each sid
e connecting to the town house next to it. There was a front courtyard with a black iron gate and steps that led up to the bright red front door. And the sidewalk in front of the house was wide for pedestrians.
They’d been there for the last week, doing facial recognition and background checks on anyone who’d come and gone from the home of Dr. Harold Bixler, a man she’d been trying to pin down for the last six months for brokering stolen Russian girls into the sex trade.
“How come I never get to be the hot blonde?” Tom Donner asked from the passenger seat. “And how come you’re driving a Mercedes? You know what I drive at home? A beat-to-shit Explorer. I dropped a burrito in between my seat and the armrest and I’ve never been able to get it out. It smells like a Taco Bell in there all the time.”
Liv hummed along to the country-and-western CD Donner had made and then said, “You should file a discrimination suit with HR. I’d much rather be dressed like you. It’s a pain in the arse to hide my gun in an outfit like this.”
The black running leggings she wore stopped midcalf, and were made specially with a conceal panel for her weapon at the back. She wore a hot-pink sports bra and black tank top, and her hair was pulled into a high ponytail.
There was another two-man team behind the property, and a few more agents mixed in with the crowd, working the street angle. They’d spent months getting their man in a position where Bixler would trust him. And it was all about to pay off.
“I was going to ask you where you were hiding it, but my wife told me I need to start thinking before I speak. I asked a lady when her baby was due once,” Donner said remorsefully. “She wasn’t pregnant.”
Liv groaned and shook her head sympathetically. “And how did that work out for you?”
“Six stitches,” he said, pointing to his temple. “Bashed me right in the head with her purse. And then there was the time my wife and I went to the law enforcement gala back in DC, and I told the police commissioner he had a beautiful daughter. Turns out it was his wife.”
Liv laughed out loud, grateful she was with Donner instead of LeBlanc or Petrovich, who were in the other car. Neither of them had a sense of humor, which would’ve made for a long week.
Because Interpol was a global organization, teams comprised agents from all over the world. Tom Donner was tall and gangly, having never filled out after his teenage years, and the thinning sandy hair he combed across the bald spot on top of his head failed to hide it. They went way back to the early days of her career and they’d always clicked.
“I’ll bet you fifty that Richards doesn’t show today,” he said. “I don’t trust that guy. He’s a criminal first and foremost, and just because he’s helping us do a good deed doesn’t mean he’s going to change his ways. He just wants leniency on his tax evasion charges.”
“The lesser of two evils,” she said. “Are we betting pounds or dollars, because your fifty isn’t what it used to be.”
“Pounds,” he said. “And you can buy me dinner after you lose. I need to save every penny I can. Do you know how expensive daughters are? I have four of them. And why do stores hate parents of daughters so much? What’s with the American Girl store? Did you know they have a hair salon? For dolls. It’s ludicrous. And then they get older and it’s makeup and clothes and purses that cost more than my first car. And then they go off to college and drain you for everything you’re worth until they meet a boy who has a degree in philosophy or music, of all things, and then they want to get married. I can’t even talk about the cost of weddings without breaking out in a rash.”
“At least when she gets married, she gets off your payroll,” Liv said, smiling.
“Did you not hear me?” he said, his eyes wide and animated. “I said she’s marrying a man with a degree in philosophy, for God’s sake. Of course she’ll still be on my payroll.”
“Fine, I’ll buy dinner if I lose,” she said. “But I’m not going to, and then you’ll have to dip into one of their college funds.”
“It’ll have to be the oldest one’s,” he said soberly. “When you have the first kid, you’re all excited and you become an overachiever, doing everything from banking umbilical cord blood and buying ridiculous insurance to processing your own organic baby food. Once the second kid comes along, they’re lucky if there are any pictures of them. By the time the fourth kid comes along, they’re eating Cheerios off the floor and you take them everywhere in a diaper because all the clothes that have been passed down have weird stains.”
“You should do commercials,” she said, mouth quirking. “You’re really good at selling the whole parenting thing. I’m pretty sure I went sterile after you started talking about the hair salon for dolls.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But maybe you could come visit and babysit sometime. I haven’t had sex with my wife in forty-two days. Why are you so sure Richards is going to show today?” he asked, changing the subject. “No one’s heard from him. I think he’s rabbited. He’d be smart to realize that what he’s doing could potentially put him on a hit list. He’s costing a lot of people a lot of money.”
“Sometimes staying out of prison is a bigger motivator than you think. Richards is playing the part like we asked. Bixler has had the shipment for a week now. He’s got to unload the girls. When we chatted up one of his staff at that pub on the corner, she said Bixler had told them months ago they’d be getting a ten-day vacation. All but his most loyal servants. There are three full-time staff still inside, so there’s no doubt they have complete knowledge of the shipment of girls.
“When Richards shows today and gives us the signal, we’ll be making four arrests and putting some very bad people away for a very long time. And those girls will get to go home to their families.”
She felt that pang she always did when she thought about the families of the lost girls. About that gut-wrenching fear of knowing you might never see your child or sibling again. She’d returned dozens of girls to their families over the last seven years. But no one had ever brought her sister home.
Elizabeth had truly been lost. There had been no leads. No suspects. Nothing. With the crowds outside of Harrods on the street that day, it had been impossible to find one little girl in a pink coat among the sea of people. And it was highly probable the kidnappers had given Elizabeth a tranquilizer of some kind to keep her docile as they made their escape.
Liv and Elizabeth were not only sisters but identical twins, down to the birthmark they shared on one hip that looked like half of a heart. Liv had read stories about twins who were so connected that one knew instinctively when the other died, but she’d only been six years old when she lost her other half. All she’d known was that her sister was gone, and there was a part of her soul that was missing. She didn’t know if that feeling meant that Elizabeth was dead. But it had been almost twenty-five years, and still the gaping hole in her life yawned as if it had happened yesterday.
Hope was something she hadn’t lost over the years since Elizabeth’s disappearance, and she’d never stopped looking for her sister. But there were days when she’d come close. Meeting and falling in love with Dante Malcolm had certainly put her as close to the edge as she ever wanted to be.
Liv had replayed that night over and over in her mind, feeling stupid and used. How could she have failed to realize he was Simon Locke? She’d gone back and studied Locke’s profile and started putting conversations and the timeline in context soon after his death, looking for answers. Looking for peace. She wondered how she’d ever missed it. But hindsight was twenty-twenty. And she’d been a fool. She’d locked the files away, and hadn’t looked at them since.
She’d been devastated. Dante had broken her spirit and her heart. He’d left her career in shambles, and she’d had to fight to regain her solid reputation. She’d been suspended and was under an Internal Affairs investigation for months to see if she’d been complicit in the crimes he’d committed. And still she’d mourned for him. The bastard.
“Earth to
Liv,” Donner said, waving his hand in front of her face.
“What?” she asked, jerking back and then facing him.
“Must’ve been a nice side trip,” he said. “I stayed like that for three days once when my wife told me she was pregnant with our fourth.”
Liv blinked a few times and shifted in her seat. The week was starting to catch up with her, and she was exhausted. She never let her mind wander to thoughts of Dante—not if she could help it—but sometimes they crept in. She was just so … angry. At herself, and at a man who was buried six feet under at Highgate Cemetery. She’d visited his grave once, hoping that if she got it all out and gave him a piece of her mind, it would help her heal. But she’d stared at his name engraved on his headstone and fallen to her knees, weeping.
Liv didn’t know how long she’d been in her own head, but fortunately nothing had changed at Bixler’s residence. Maybe she was going to be out fifty pounds and dinner after all.
“Looks like rain is coming in,” she said.
“That’s what I was saying while you were sleeping with your eyes open. The clouds rolled in pretty fast.”
“I’m going to get a tea and a snack before the rain comes—we could be trapped in here for a while. You want anything?”
“I’m supposed to eat healthy stuff,” Donner said, his pout so pathetic she wanted to laugh. “Maybe some granola and a coffee, black.”
“Really?” she asked.
“No, get me fish and chips from that stand across the street. My mouth’s been watering for hours. And a soda. Not diet. Tell them to add extra sugar.”
“That stuff will kill you,” Liv said, putting in her earbuds and connecting through Bluetooth with the comm system.
“You sound like my wife.”
“Testing,” she said, turning up the volume. “This is Jane Austen. I’m heading out on foot.”
