Spy Games (Tarnished Heroes)

by Bristol, Sidney

  Her lips thinned. Was she thinking about Matt?

  He was.

  Rand hadn’t been able to do right by her brother, which meant this was his chance to make up for that mistake at least. If he could keep Sarah safe, get her home—maybe he could forgive himself.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  He nodded, not trusting his voice enough to speak yet.

  Sarah put her bowl down on the floor and scooted over to sit next to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his shoulder.

  She’d be justified in hating him. If Matt wanted to kick his ass, he wouldn’t even put up a fight. Rand had earned that.

  He looped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head.

  He’d missed Sarah, Matt, their families. Everything had changed, and if he were honest, he’d never moved on from the accident.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” he finally got out.

  “You could have called. Emailed. Come back.” She squeezed him a bit tighter.

  He needed to put space between them. It was one thing to air their grievances about the past, it was another to hold her. Touch her. He was a special kind of fucked up, and she needed to be far away from him.

  Rand cleared his throat and let go. “If you’re done eating, we should hit the road.” He checked the time. “I’d like to use the afternoon rush to make it across the city.”

  “Good thing I didn’t take my shoes off, I guess.” She let go with him, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Ready when you are.”

  Her lips were full, slightly red, like she wore some sort of lip balm or something. Would she taste sweet? What did adult Sarah sound like when she kissed? He’d never forgotten catching her with a boyfriend under the bleachers, or the moan that’d nearly had him breaking the other kid’s nose.

  “Great.” Rand stood and strode across the apartment. He shoved a few things in his bag and slung it over his shoulders. “I’ll go first. I want you to stay twenty yards or so behind me.”

  The faster they reached the safe house, the sooner he could set up the meet across the border. Then he could get Sarah out. Home. Fuck the briefcase, and fuck her going back to China. He’d take her home and sit on her if he had to.

  Someone had betrayed her. Twice. And he was going to do everything in his power to make her safe.

  Chapter Three

  “What did they find?” Kim Young-sik didn’t look up from the tablet.

  “Pharmacy was broken into, cameras disabled, power cut. The blood at the scene is useless.”

  “They were there.” Young-sik laid the tablet down. The signal was dead now. They’d have to find the girl the old-fashioned way.

  “Sir?”

  Young-sik glanced at the younger man. What else could go wrong?

  “Intelligence says Zhang Wei just arrived.”

  Young-sik pushed to his feet. This was bad. Very bad.

  It only made sense that the Chinese would want the girl, too. He’d hoped they would hesitate making a grab for her now. That he might be able to snag her first. But he’d known that was a useless desire.

  Wei was bad news.

  “We need more people on the trail. Get everyone we can on the street. Someone must have seen the Americans. We will find them.”

  …

  Zhang Wei strolled down the busy thoroughfare of the Seoul airport. Two hours of nothing but exploring terminals and restaurants, and not once did it appear as though he were being followed.

  It was time to get out of this hellhole.

  He sidestepped the foot traffic and found an out of the way spot to pause. By appearances, he was just another businessman in for a meeting. Appearances worked in his favor here. He checked his phone, accessing the tracking app, and zoomed in on the signal.

  No movement, just like his source had promised.

  Wei changed his course and hopped a train to the next terminal, which put him within twenty yards of the signal, at best guess. Rows of luggage lockers sat back against the wall. Wei walked past them, studying the people closest.

  His source was a mole. A rat. The scum of the earth. He wouldn’t trust the person to tell him the whole truth. It couldn’t be this simple, not with the CIA. However, it did not appear as though there was anyone on hand.

  He zoomed in more, narrowing it down to a small block of lockers, and strolled toward the signal.

  The keys were in all but two lockers.

  Wei pocketed the phone and pulled out a small lock pick gun. He turned his back to the foot traffic and slid it in the first locked compartment. The tumblers moved, shifting with the device until the door swung open. A purse, a jacket, a duffel bag—but no briefcase.

  He tossed a few coins in the locker and secured it. The internal mechanism released the lock pick.

  The second one, then. He took a knee and again inserted the lock pick, holding his breath.

  They could only speculate at the secrets the briefcase contained. Supposedly, he could learn the names and locations of spies within China’s borders, as well as traitors in their own ranks.

  The lock gave way and the door swung open.

  The silver briefcase was nothing extraordinary. The sides were dented, the metal scratched. There wasn’t even a logo. It was completely nondescript.

  He used the last of his coins to retrieve the lock pick.

  They had one up on the Americans. They’d never know what hit them.

  …

  Sarah stood in the dim basement apartment, listening to the silence. It was quiet enough she could almost hear her own heartbeat.

  Judging by the dust on…everything, she doubted this was where Rand lived. It was another hideout. And this was where he’d left her while he went out to “procure supplies.” Whatever that meant.

  Her arm hurt, her stomach was empty yet again, and she smelled. Like days-old sweat, dried blood, and rotting God-only-knew-what on her feet kind of smell.

  She checked the door one more time and toed off her shoes, leaving them in a cubby near the entrance. If she couldn’t make contact with her handler, Irene, the only thing left to do while she waited for Rand was to shower.

  She had problems to figure out, and a shower always helped her think.

  Sarah closed herself in the small bathroom and stripped out of her clothing. As far as she was concerned, it was ruined. Besides, trying to pass through customs with bloodstains on her shirt would draw the wrong kind of attention. She peeled off the bandage, grimacing at the ugly wound. No wonder she’d passed out from the pain. The thing would need stitches, and she was not looking forward to that.

  She turned the faucet on and dug out a bottle of shampoo-conditioner stuff out from behind the medicine cabinet that could at least get the job done.

  Rand.

  She almost couldn’t believe he was there. That she’d finally seen him face-to-face.

  He still made her knees a little weak and her heartbeat erratic. It didn’t matter that time and distance had separated and changed them. At least not to her heart.

  What was she going to do?

  She loved him, but she wasn’t sure going into hiding with him was the right decision, either.

  Then, there was the little fact that he believed she’d been sold out.

  There was no denying she’d had a tracker put inside of her without her consent. She’d seen it. With her own eyes. The air in her lungs had seemed to freeze, and she wanted to curl up into a little, tight ball. That thing had been inside her for years. Someone, likely a person she trusted, had violated her.

  But were they certain someone was tracking her? Maybe the people following her had just lost sight of them when they’d entered the pharmacy.

  And there was the package. That most certainly had a tracking device on it, or it did before Rand deactivated it. Why would the MSS agents track her and not the package if they had access to that sort of thing? Even with the delay, they should be able to locate it. But they hadn’t.
Which put the focus right back on her. What value was she to them without that? If she left, would they care? She had no knowledge other than where she dropped stuff at and when her flights were leaving. The only reason she knew of Rand was because of an accident. An oversight.

  Or was it?

  Besides her handler and the director in China, the only person she knew the name of was Rand. On any given trip she did eight to a dozen dead drops. In all that time the only name that had been said around her was Rand’s. Why?

  She picked out her bra and panties from the pile of clothes and used the shampoo to scrub them as clean as she could. Leaving her wardrobe choices up to a man wasn’t ideal in this situation, but she couldn’t be too choosy, either.

  The facts, as she knew them, began and ended with the knowledge that she was in danger and Rand was part of her life again. Everything else was pure speculation. She had to believe that Rand was trustworthy, no matter what had happened in their past.

  Sarah turned the faucet off and stood on the cool tiles, letting the water drip off her. The wound ached, but the pills had dulled the worst of it. Too bad they didn’t begin to touch the twisted feelings she had about Rand.

  Seeing him again… All she wanted to do was kiss and strangle him. Too bad he’d never crossed the line. There’d been more than a few moments over the years where, if they’d had five more minutes, she knew in her gut something would have happened. Matt always did have the worst timing. Being cooped up with Rand like this pushed all those frustrated feelings to the surface. She needed air, to think about something else, besides him and the very real problem that someone had betrayed her. More than once now.

  She took a towel out of the cabinet and dried off, careful with her arm and the still-tender flesh.

  One thing at a time.

  First, they’d get the package to the assets. Then, they could figure out who they could trust.

  The lock scraped on the other side of the wall.

  Sarah pressed her back to the bathroom door and listened, holding her breath.

  “It’s me,” Rand announced.

  She closed her eyes, reveling in the brief comfort of that knowledge.

  Things would be okay. Rand wouldn’t leave her.

  She hung her bra and panties up to dry, knotted the towel around her chest, and stepped out into the chilly apartment.

  “Please tell me you got more food. I’m starving.” The tile floor chilled her toes, but at least she smelled better.

  “I did one—” Rand turned.

  “One?” She glanced down at her arm. Was it bleeding again? What was his deal? He’d seen her in towels before. It wasn’t anything new. “That smells amazing.”

  “I did one better. I got us dinner.” He lifted a plastic bag and shook it at her.

  “My stomach will love you.”

  He put the bag down. “Let’s see your arm first.”

  “Do we have to?” She was whining, but dang it, all she wanted to do was eat.

  “You want to lose your meal?”

  “Fine.” She plopped down in the desk chair, clutching the towel to her. Even more of a reason to not put on real clothes. Getting blood on them would suck.

  Rand crossed to the desk and pulled a medical bag out of the bottom drawer.

  “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” She eyed the suture kit as he laid it all out.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure you can’t just give me a Band-Aid and kiss it to make it better?” She smiled and batted her eyelashes.

  “This is a bit worse than a skinned knee.” He pulled out a bottle and a prepackaged syringe. “Lucky for you, the anesthesia should take the edge off.”

  “Oh, goodie.”

  “I don’t want to give you too much. Just in case, you know?”

  Just in case they had to run or she needed to use her hand. Yeah. She got it.

  “You clean this out in the shower?” he asked.

  “Best of my ability.”

  “Good.”

  He sat on a rolling stool and crept forward, pushing one knee between hers, the other along her outer leg, trapping her to the desk. To get away, she’d practically have to crawl over him. It was probably intentional. His way of keeping her a prisoner while he patched her up. Instead, she felt…protected. Shielded. Probably not what he meant, but she wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.

  “Take a deep breath. This’ll sting a little.” Rand leaned over her arm.

  Sarah stared at the ceiling. She winced at the pinprick of pain that went hand-in-hand with each dose of the painkiller.

  “When’d you get your Dr. McDreamy license?” She wiggled her fingers, already going a bit numb.

  “SEALs. There’s not always a doctor around to stitch you up. Learned a thing or two from some guys I was stationed with in the CIA at the time. Funny how things work, huh? If I’d known then I would be working for guys like that I might have asked them a few questions.”

  “Like speaking Korean?”

  “That took effort.” He threaded the needle and dunked the whole thing in a tincture of alcohol.

  “How many languages do you speak?”

  “Fluently? Or badly?”

  “Both.”

  “Korean out of necessity, as you can see. I can get a beer and find the bathroom in Urdu, Mandarin, and French. And I can order drinks in Russian, but that’s about it.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “Can you feel this?”

  “Feel what?” She stared at the ceiling a bit harder. Yup, there was that queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Dammit, but she was hungry.

  “Good. What languages do you speak?” Rand hunched over, his face dropping out of her peripheral vision.

  “My English and Mandarin are decent. I can get myself into trouble in Korean, Japanese, and Thai, but I wouldn’t call it conversational.” The tug on her skin was strange, distant and yet part of her. Her nerves twisted up, anticipating pain that never came.

  “Focusing on the Asian countries?”

  “It’s where they needed me in the beginning. I thought I was going to spend my life in Africa. I’m a little bummed I’m not getting to see savannah cats.”

  “Take a vacation.”

  “With what time?”

  “I hear ya.”

  “How long is this going to take?” She fisted the corner of the towel and wiggled her toes. A chill set in, amplified by her wet hair and the tile floor.

  “Not too long. I don’t want to skimp on the stitches. This isn’t going to be pretty. I’m sorry.”

  “Good thing I’m not vain about my arms.”

  “You said you’d tell me the story later.”

  “Earthquake when I was in Japan at a conference. We were touring a facility there, looking at their new state-of-the-art water treatment plant when it happened. This unit hadn’t been installed yet, and it fell over, landed on me. I thought I was going to die, honestly.”

  “Did you have surgery there?”

  “Japan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I was pretty out of it from the pain, but they got me stabilized and I came home for the reconstructive surgery.”

  “Let me guess, your handler was involved?”

  “I don’t honestly know. I want to say one of our other people was.” Charlie. He’d gotten her home, then insisted she stay with him a few days on her way back to work after she’d been cleared for work again.

  “Just a few more. You’re doing good, Bitsy.”

  “Shut up.” She resisted the urge to punch his shoulder.

  Rand chuckled and straightened, tossing her a mischievous grin. The boys had always loved to point out her diminutive height.

  “Careful. You don’t want me to get this wrong.” He waggled a gloved finger at her.

  She tried to not look at it too hard. “Just finish already.”

  “Sorry.” He bent back to the work at hand. “So, Matt got married.”

  “Yup.”

&
nbsp; “You haven’t?”

  She snorted before she could moderate her reaction.

  “What?” Rand glanced up again.

  “When would I have the time to meet someone? Believe me, Mom and Dad would love it if I got married and stopped traveling, but unless I married someone in the company, it’s not happening.”

  “What about one of your water people?”

  “I work with mostly women, and I’ve never swung that way.”

  “Well, I’m partial to women, so maybe I should keep my eye on a job opening.”

  Right. Rand, working on digging wells and making nice with local officials. That was so not his thing.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar.”

  “You would hate doing my job.”

  “I don’t know. I think I’d look good in a pair of those wader pants.”

  “No one looks good in those.”

  “I bet you’re pretty cute. Probably goes up to your shoulders, though.”

  “You’re a jerk, know that?”

  “I’m a cute one, at least. Last one. I better kiss it to make it all better.”

  She swallowed, staring at his reddish-brown head of hair, wishing she could feel the brush of his lips against her skin. But the entire area was numb, so she’d have to imagine what it might be like.

  “There. All better.” He straightened, a bit of that same mischievous energy sticking to him as he stripped off the gloves and tossed them in the bin. It was almost like it’d been back then. When they were kids and Rand wanted to make her feel better after hurting herself trying to keep up.

  She was staring.

  He was giving her a funny look, like something was wrong with her, or maybe she had cooties. But in this moment, he looked like her Rand. It was the slightly goofy smile, the tilt of his head, that spark in his eye that said he was up to no good. She was all too aware of the warmth of his leg between hers, how close they were, the years she’d spent pining for this man, how much she’d missed him.

  He lifted a hand and pushed her hair behind her ear.

  Endorphins. That would account for the rush of blood past her ears and the driving need eating her up.

  His hand tightened on a bit of her hair, tugging at the roots. Her breath caught in her throat. She’d always been aware of him, but now it was a sharp, painful thing.