Her hands shook as she read the note he’d left underneath the keys, his house keys.
Bobby Juniper is going back.
“Oh, God, Bobby, no,” she whispered.
Clutch had left Sarah the keys to his house—a place that was already paid for. He’d left her instructions, where he’d hidden money. The business he ran would close, but she’d have someplace to stay and she would have enough cash to get by for quite a while. He’d send her more, because he wasn’t going to need much.
GOST wouldn’t go after her—she’d be safe, because he was going back to them. He hadn’t planned on it, hadn’t wanted to leave her while she slept so peacefully, but at some point last night, when they’d been making plans, he’d known what he needed to do.
“You’ll come with me, then,” he murmured. “Into the wild, never looking back?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t sell any more of your pictures. You won’t even be able to take them for pleasure. How can I take that away from you?”
“You’re not taking anything from me. I’m giving it up willingly.” She stroked his back, cradled his head. And that’s when he made up his mind, wrote a note that gave her some idea of the kinds of crimes he’d committed. Anything to make her fall out of love with him.
“Bobby Juniper, reporting for duty,” he said quietly to the man who’d met his car at the border of the DRC.
“There are some men who are very angry with you, Bobby.”
“I’m here. That should be all that matters,” he said.
“You killed one of your own. Sources say you had help.”
“Those sources are wrong.” Clutch kept his facial expression neutral and stared at the man.
“Why should I believe you?”
“I agreed to this life, that’s why. And you agreed to leave anyone associated with me on the outside alive.”
A life for a life, and Sarah’s was always the more important. She could continue with her photography, go to school. Get married, have a family, get the hell out of this country, if she wanted.
She’d forget about him. And that would be the best thing she could do.
He wouldn’t forget anything about her for the rest of his life, though, no matter how long that was.
The man, John Caspar, stared him down for a second before shaking his hand. “Then the deal is done. Welcome back, Bobby.”
Clutch nodded, could swear he felt the last piece of his soul breaking off as he left the borrowed truck behind and got into John’s car.
Jake was sitting at the bottom of the staircase that led from his rooms to Isabelle’s when he heard the doorbell ring. Still, he didn’t move from the spot, heard Isabelle rustling around in the room behind him, packing her things as he leaned against the wall and let the memories of this house comfort him.
He knew every creak, every way to get in and out without being detected. This house had been a haven to him when he’d needed one most. He still remembered that trip, all of them loaded into Kenny’s old Suburban. They’d left in broad daylight, Maggie not caring that she was taking one boy away from a foster care system and another from his family.
Neither foster care nor Nick’s family had come after any of them.
But this house couldn’t keep Rafe away.
Even though Jake didn’t hear Nick coming up the stairs, his brother was now standing in front of him. “The FBI’s here,” Nick said.
“She’s expecting them. Bring her down.”
“You can still fight this, you know,” Nick said. “You can grab her, take off—”
“Bring her down.”
“And where are you going to be?”
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t …”
“I haven’t heard you say can’t in a hell of a long time.”
“I’m in love with her, Nick. I’ve got to do the right thing here.”
His brother stared at him, opened his mouth, and then thought better of it. For a second, Jake thought Nick would refuse, but he didn’t.
“I’d better get her now, then,” Nick said instead. “Chris and I just got called in. Training.”
“Training,” Jake repeated.
“Yeah. That’s where I’ll be. What about you?”
Jake stood, prepared to head down the back staircase, one they rarely used anymore. “You know what I was thinking about today? Remember when you stole the principal’s Caddy?”
“Borrowed. I borrowed it,” Nick said quietly.
“I promised her mother I’d keep her safe,” Jake said finally.
“The only promises you should be making are to yourself—and to Izzy.” Nick shook his head, but he didn’t try to stop Jake. “I’ll bring her down.”
“She’ll be all right,” Jake said, repeated that to himself over and over as he went down the steps, away from her.
I’ll be all right.
The FBI agent waiting in the foyer was tall, with dark hair, and his eyes were kind.
Isabelle hated him on sight. And even when he picked up her bags and brought them out to the car, she didn’t follow, stood next to Nick inside the front foyer.
“You’ve got to trust him, Izzy,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t talking about the FBI agent.
“Like you do.”
“I trust Jake with my life, have for a long time.”
“He said you were the one who saved him—the night his stepfather died.”
Nick shook his head. “Jake saved himself. All I did was bring him down to the ambulance because the EMTs weren’t moving fast enough.”
Agent Harris cleared his throat from where he stood in the doorway. “We’re ready, ma’am. The senator’s been apprised that we’re taking you into custody.”
“You’ll be all right,” Nick repeated. She had no choice but to believe him as she let Agent Harris escort her out of the first place she’d felt safe since Africa and into the black Town Car.
He introduced her to Agent Callum, the man behind the wheel, who wasn’t nearly as friendly. His head was shaved bald and he barely turned to glance at her before he pulled the car away from the curb.
His driving style was safe. Calming.
She was miserable as she huddled alone in the backseat, her bags next to her. And even though she didn’t want to, she turned and watched out the back window until she could no longer see the house.
The men in the front were listening to the radio and drinking coffee—coffee, like this was any other day and she was of no real importance to them.
“I think I want to go back,” she said. No one heard her—or if they did, neither one answered. “I said, I think this is all a mistake …”
“No mistake, ma’am,” the man who’d taken her from the house to the car said, his voice slightly more slurred than it had been earlier. “Your mother …”
He trailed off and slumped to the side, his head hitting the window.
“Oh, my God, he passed out—you need to stop the car.” Isabelle pulled herself up in between the front seats as the other man didn’t slow the car down.
“Your mother wanted it this way, Isabelle.”
Her hands tightened on the seats and her mouth opened, a silent O. Her breathing became harsh, her world unsteady as the car picked up speed.
“I told you I’d be back for you. And I always keep my promises.”
Hostages taken. Mission Status: Ready.
Let the war games begin.
The team room, where the lockers were located, was loud to the point of raucousness. Someone had cranked up the radio and Chris and Zane were singing and dancing as they readied for the training op.
Nick had moved away to get into his own space—dressed quickly and efficiently with first-line gear and all the trash he carried and moved on to the war paint. He wrapped his hair in a cammy bandanna to keep it out of the way, applied war paint with his fingers, covered every square inch of skin above the neck—becoming invisible under the greens and browns and blacks. He painted dow
n lower than normal since he tended to rip the collar of his T-shirts purposely—couldn’t stand shit around his neck, and so he covered the skin leading to his chest as well.
Survival mode.
There would be a time for stripping down and cleaning off layer by layer. Now was about covering up. About protection.
Less than five minutes later he was hauling ass up the icy trail with a forty-pound ruck. It was close to pitch black, the snow had started to slow and his NVs did shit, but he was still headed in the right direction. Instinct coupled with years of experience told him so.
Prisoner, six o’clock, he motioned. Chris nodded, as if he already knew. He always already knew.
The night of Isabelle’s rescue, Nick had gotten to the meeting place with only a slight delay—he’d had to reroute thanks to enemy fire, because he hadn’t had time for it. And Chris had already left to find a car.
His brother claimed it was just a symbiotic thing, that he knew the men so well. Nick wasn’t going to be the one to break it to him that the guy was probably even more psychic than Kenny was.
Tonight’s prisoner was a downed pilot in enemy territory. Being played by a Navy pilot—and former SEAL—Glen Sinclair. Chris’s ex-girlfriend’s brother.
You couldn’t spit in the Navy without hitting someone you were related to, dated or went to high school with. Privacy? Fuck privacy. Nick was still shocked—and grateful—that his own background had stayed as under wraps as it had.
The name change helped. Having best friends who could keep their mouths shut like steel traps when they needed to was even better.
Shots overhead and he and Chris hit the floor, rolled to find cover.
“Goatfuck,” Saint muttered from his right, and Nick knew this was the part of the exercise the SEALs hadn’t been privy to. The part where they got captured and sent to an impromptu SERE-like training for a few hours or a day, and there was no way Nick was dealing with that well.
None of the SEALs did, which was why having them to participate in a SERE-like evolution always involved a trick or two from the top brass.
“We’re not getting fucking captured today,” Mark Kendall, the team’s senior chief whispered. “We’re grabbing the hostage and getting out.”
“Let me,” Nick said quietly. He’d pulled this trick with Jake more times than he could count … this time, he’d do it with Chris and it would be as effective. The old bait and switch.
He began a slow commando crawl toward the house where the prisoner was being held. Halfway there, his phone began to vibrate against his thigh. When he checked it, he saw that he’d taken Jake’s phone by accident.
When he checked the message, he realized it was no accident.
Isabelle’s legs barely worked but she forced herself to move along the wooded trails so Rafe wouldn’t have to touch her. He’d tied her hands again, and she’d bitten her lip so as not to beg him.
But when she tripped over a tree root and lost her footing, he caught her. She resisted, but he held her, turned her body into his. She heard the shots in the distance, the yells of men and women all around her—war games, the female Marines had told her earlier at the clinic. Mass confusion. No one knows what’s going on … you’ll see a lot of action tonight.
Rafe had known about all of it. And even though she had to swallow hard to force down the retch, she looked him in the eyes.
In turn, he yanked the gag out of her mouth. “This is just like old times, isn’t it?” he asked. “You and me, together, alone in the jungle.”
She didn’t answer him, didn’t know what he wanted to hear—or what would throw him even further over the edge.
“I had a plan, Izzy, It was all going to be simple. Kill you and watch your mother and Cal suffer. And then I saw you and everything changed. And when you decided you were done with me, I came up with a new plan. None of them will see the red light.”
She kept her mouth shut, and he kept talking.
“Your SEAL’s not going to come out of it alive. Neither is Cal. But you could.” He paused, ran a hand over her hair, and she tried not to flinch.
“You could come with me, Izzy. Run away into the jungle with me—let me keep you safe there.” Rafe’s voice was a deep, hypnotic timbre that chilled her. “Or I could take you there without your consent. In time, you’d learn to depend on me, to need me. To want me. And until that happens, I’ll just take you any way I have to.”
“No!” She screamed it, so loudly she startled herself, a primal sound that came from somewhere so deep she felt it reverberate in every fiber of her being.
He attempted to stuff the gag back into her mouth and she bit his finger hard. He hit her across the face and she went down. She tried to crawl away from him but he grabbed her again and yanked her along, his hand on her throat this time.
This would not be a repeat of what happened two months ago. She refused to give him the satisfaction, refused to cry.
He’d let the FBI agent die right in front of her. And she had no doubt he planned to do the same with Cal.
“What have you done with my uncle? I want to see him,” she demanded.
Rafe restrained her easily by the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll see him soon enough. He’s not dead—yet. I wanted you here first, to hear his confession.”
“I know everything, Rafe. It’s not going to change anything.”
He shoved her down to the soft earth and she fell hard on her hip. She backed away from him, still on the ground, in the direction of the woods.
You’re strong, Isabelle. You can do this.
“You can’t blame your life on other people,” she told him.
He took a few steps toward her, grabbed her ankles and began to chain her to the nearest tree. He grabbed her already bound wrists and wrapped the metal shackles around them
“Your father and your uncle—or should I say, your two fathers—ruined my life. Do you know what kind of monsters raised me, Izzy?”
“I know you had all the chances in the world to make something of yourself. I know that every man’s worth more than the very worst thing he’s ever done—it’s not too late for you, Rafe.”
“It’s been too late for me for a long time, I just never realized it,” he said and she felt the sinking dread in the pit of her stomach at his words, as if perhaps it had always been too late for Rafe. This was what he’d been living for, surviving for, the last few years. That had twisted his soul in ways Isabelle couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“After I finish with you two, I’m going to get your mother. I’ll enjoy showing her exactly what happened to you and Cal. She thinks she’s safe—just the way you did. I hope you finally realize that there’s no such thing as being safe.”
But she knew better. She’d had safety in the palm of her hand, warm and comfortable, and with a desperation she couldn’t control, she began to yell for help, continued yelling even after he slapped her across the face and stuffed a rag into her mouth.
“It’s almost true confessions time for the old man. Time for the whole base to hear his betrayal.”
“Back away from her, Rafe.”
The sound of Jake’s voice reverberated through her. There was nothing she could do or say, helpless against the bindings and the gag.
And when Rafe whirled around, weapon drawn on Jake, she closed her eyes and began to pray for all of them.
The woods were dense, dark as hell, and normally Nick liked it that way, could get lost in here and come out the victor.
Tonight, no matter what happened, there would be no victory. These woods, this training ground represented everything that could go wrong.
His team was lying in wait, the war games halted. Saint had discovered trip wires encircling much of the training ground—live ones—and Nick skirted off, leaving Chris to explain what was going on with Rafe.
It was the only explanation as to why the base was rigged.
Along the way, Nick had passed some IEDs that, on further investigation, look
ed to be controlled by remote detonators. He’d reported back to Saint, who sent their senior chief to jam the signals, and then he’d kept going. He’d also taken note of several safe places where there appeared to be no explosives—areas with enough cover to withstand most explosions.
It hadn’t taken him long to get to the old O-course. The first person he spotted was Rafe, the man waiting to take his revenge any way he could get it. Waiting to take Isabelle from Jake, and there was no way that was happening.
His own breathing slowed, the way he’d been taught—sniper slow.
Isabelle was struggling against her bonds. But that was unnoticed by Jake and Rafe, who were concentrating only on each other.
“How the hell did you find me?” Rafe demanded.
Jake gave the briefest hint of a smile, as if to make Rafe lose his cool even more. “I was in your trunk.”
Jake had been in the principal’s trunk the day Nick had borrowed his car as well.
CHAPTER
24
This was wrong—killing from anger was wrong—and Jake hadn’t felt this kind of rage since the night Steve tried to kill him and his own survival reflexes took over. All the anger he’d been pushing down for years had come to a boil, the pressure of pretending everything was all right exploding, and now there were consequences he’d have to live with for the rest of his life, even if no one in the free world would convict him on any charges.
Self-defense. Rules of engagement. Yes, most likely, from what little of the incident he could remember. The searing of the brand had rendered him unconscious with rage and pain. When Jake woke up in the hospital, Nick told him that Steve was dead, a broken neck from falling backward over the kitchen table.
More than likely, the man had been pushed.
So yes, they could say self-defense or rules of engagement, coat it any way they’d like—in Jake’s mind, he’d always remember it as the day he killed his stepfather. He’d known he was going to do it before they walked into the door of the apartment that night, knew that Steve was going to push him over the edge. Jake had been close a time or two before, now that he was nearly as tall as Steve and stronger, because the alcohol had been weakening Steve’s body …
Hard to Hold Page 28
