You_Only_Love_Twice_ARE

by Lexi Blake

  He made it halfway to Main Street when he knew someone was watching him. He stopped under the awning of the Mexican place and looked up at the hotel. What room had they said she was in?

  And that was when he noticed the red dot on his chest.

  She wasn’t cheating on him. She was setting him up for a kill. She was in that hotel. Maybe she’d even sent the text. In those seconds he stood there, the truth hit him. She’d never wanted him and now she wanted him dead.

  She was watching him. She was hiding in the recesses of that hotel room with a sniper rifle. She hadn’t had the guts to take him out face to face. No. She’d put a scope between them like he was an animal she was hunting.

  “What the fuck are you waiting for Phoebe?” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “You want me? You want to take me out? Do it!”

  He put his arms out so she had the best target possible.

  Everything he’d survived and it had come down to this. A weariness settled over him and Jesse accepted the truth. He’d fought and fought to live and now he was going to stand here and let her do her worst.

  He didn’t want to live in a world where she betrayed him. He simply didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Phoebe’s breath caught as Jesse stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Her hands were shaking. They never shook. She was always cool as a cucumber when she was on assignment. She went into what she liked to call “work mode.” The minute she’d gotten the signal that she had an assignment, her brain shifted to a place where all of the emotional shit fell away and a cool precision took over.

  She wouldn’t admit it to Ten, but the McKay-Taggart assignment had been difficult in a way they never could have expected. She’d walked into that office expecting to spend her time figuring out how Taggart worked and how he fit in with Jesse Murdoch. It should have been simple. The workplace was often where her ops took her. She really did have a degree in accounting. It gave her insight into money situations and that told her a lot about the people around her. In her dreams, she’d wanted to discover they were working for the enemy or at the very least worked against Agency and US interests. She could safely shut them down and get Murdoch sent to Guantanamo Bay where he belonged.

  And then she’d started having lunch with Grace Taggart.

  And then with Serena Dean-Miles and Eve McKay.

  And she’d actually met Jesse Murdoch.

  She’d gotten soft—even about Big Tag, who hid a massive heart under about fifty miles of sarcasm. She’d seen all the pro bono work he did. He charged the hell out of corporate clients and then turned around and found some ex-Marine’s missing daughter for free.

  She couldn’t even think about Charlotte Taggart without smiling.

  She’d gotten lost in the group, caring for their daily troubles and woes and smiling at the way they took care of each other. It reminded her so much of how she and Jamie and Ten had been all those years ago.

  In the beginning, she’d counted the days like a prisoner waiting for a pardon, and now she worried about the call that would end Phoebe Graham. Phoebe Graham was klutzy but reliable. She babysat kids and held Jesse Murdoch’s hand, and only the faintest memory of being Phoebe Grant made her hold off on pressing her body to his, on spreading her legs and taking Jesse deep inside so there was no space between them. Her dreams had turned from tender reunions with her husband to finding out what it meant to be Jesse’s sub.

  She’d lost herself so deeply that getting that text had jarred her.

  She stared through the scope, wishing everything could fall away. This was the moment when her brain should go on autopilot. Her training would kick in and it would be like some other Phoebe did this job. No emotion. No fear. Just the moment and a bullet for the target on the other end of the scope.

  Jesse’s arms went wide and she heard herself gasp. The door to the balcony was open and she could hear him in the distance.

  “What the fuck are you waiting for, Phoebe?” Through the scope she could see how his eyes flared. “You want me? You want to take me out? Do it!”

  Panic threatened. He knew she was here. Jesse knew she was here. She stared through the scope. He was standing there with his arms spread wide, inviting her to do her job.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t shoot him. She looked through the scope at the face she’d come to care for and knew that no matter what that text had said, she couldn’t hurt him.

  She was thoroughly and utterly compromised.

  And he was just standing there. He was standing there making himself a huge target. What if there was a backup? It happened sometimes. Sometimes the person who sent the kill order would watch from nearby to make sure his or her order was followed and to bear witness to the act.

  Or to deal with failure.

  Where would Ten be? What the hell had he found that would cause him to place a kill order on Jesse? The only reason Ten would ever place a kill order was because he feared a coming attack.

  Jesse wouldn’t attack anyone. Well, not anyone who didn’t trigger his very righteous PTSD.

  Ten was wrong. Wrong. Jesse had to get out of here. He had to hide.

  Just as she was about to shove the rifle aside and run to the balcony, there was the terrible sound of her door cracking open and a whole bunch of yelling.

  Taggart was here. Her heart started racing and she had two choices. She could try to get away or try to warn Jesse.

  She didn’t even think about it. She jumped from her sniper’s perch and ran through the open doors, her bare feet hitting the concrete of the balcony. She ran until she hit the railing.

  “Get down! Get down!”

  But she could see that he was already down, his body covered by a man in a dark suit. Simon. His partner had done his job. Ten wouldn’t take out Simon Weston. There would be too much fallout. She had some time to figure out what was going on. All she had to do was get away from Taggart and get to her brother.

  “Give me one reason I don’t kill you right now,” a dark voice said.

  Taggart was right behind her. From the sound of his voice he was still in the suite, but the door was open so it wouldn’t take more than two or three steps for him to get to her. Once he put hands on her, it would all be over. Shit. She put her hands in the air because she had zero doubt he would take any reason she gave him. So she needed to come up with something really fucking fast.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said evenly. Calm. She needed to stay calm.

  “I think you’re a liar, Phoebe, and I’m going to figure out what you’re doing here. Si, do you have that fucking maniac under control?” Tag asked.

  “He’s not a maniac.” Sometimes she didn’t like the way Taggart talked to Jesse. Oh, she understood it on an intellectual level. It was a guy thing, but it bugged her because Jesse wasn’t crazy and he wasn’t stupid.

  “Your opinion is not needed,” Taggart said.

  She could see Simon touch his ear. He was likely telling Taggart that he would take care of things.

  “You have to get them off the streets. There could be a backup.” She wasn’t going to prevaricate or play coy. Now that she was staring this thing in the face, she knew she’d been lying to herself for a long time. She didn’t know what had happened in Iraq, but she couldn’t be Jesse’s executioner and she couldn’t stand here and watch it happen either. “They’re in danger until you get them out of here.”

  She knew her career was over with that one little piece of advice, but there was nothing else she could do.

  “If you think I believe a word you say, you haven’t studied me hard enough. Turn around very slowly. I would deeply enjoy putting a couple of holes in you. I don’t like being played.”

  Oh, but she’d enjoyed playing him. At least at first she had. He’d been a challenge and she’d needed it at the time. She’d enjoyed knowing things Taggart hadn’t known. She’d waited and watched for the moment his supposedly dead wife would return and get her revenge on him.

  And she�
�d watched as they’d fallen in love again, her heart aching because she’d finally figured out that he hadn’t been the one to push Charlotte Taggart away. He’d been mourning her for years.

  The way she mourned Jamie.

  She stared out as Simon rolled off Jesse and started hauling him up. Jesse looked up, his eyes meeting hers.

  She wanted to reach out to him, to talk to him, to beg his forgiveness.

  He turned away as Simon hauled him into the restaurant. It didn’t escape her attention that they’d sat in that Mexican place for hours not weeks before, and for a little while she’d forgotten why she was there. She’d been Phoebe Graham, not Phoebe Grant, and she remembered the moment she’d leaned over and brushed her lips against his and it had been on the tip of her tongue to invite him to stay the night. She’d been ready to sleep with him. God, she’d been ready to cheat on her husband.

  Tears filled her eyes. She’d gotten soft here. She’d gotten soft around their damn kids and their lives and how they took care of each other.

  “I said turn the fuck around,” Taggart barked.

  It was all over now. Her life at McKay-Taggart was done. She wouldn’t be Phoebe Graham again. They wouldn’t ask her how she was or invite her to lunch. They wouldn’t joke around her. She would have to leave her little apartment.

  She would have to start over and all alone this time because she wouldn’t have Ten with her anymore. She’d been so compromised he couldn’t trust her again.

  When she managed to turn, she saw Taggart hadn’t come alone. Her big probably-was-a-Viking-warrior-in-a-different-life boss had a SIG trained on her, but Alex McKay had a Beretta and Jake Dean was standing behind them. She couldn’t see what he was holding, but she was sure he was armed to the teeth.

  Not that he needed it. Any one of the three men in front of her could kill her without a weapon.

  Unfortunately for them, she was pretty good herself, and she only had one person in the world left who gave a damn about her. She had to protect Ten at any cost.

  She glanced to her left. The balconies were staggered. If they were uniform, then there wasn’t a balcony under her, but there should be a balcony one floor down and to her right. If she was wrong, she would be seeing Main Street up close and personal, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad either. Maybe that would be a good way to go.

  “We can do this the easy way, Phoebe,” Taggart said. “You come back to the office with us and we’ll have a chat.”

  She could guess what that chat would be about and how friendly it would be. It would likely involve a bit of torture. She’d been in this position before. She still had a few scars from her brief time with China’s MSS.

  Somehow she thought Taggart would be kinder. Yes, he was a badass, but she was also female and she could play on that with him.

  Or she could get the hell out while the getting was good. She should remember how to do this. The whole first fifteen years of her life were about survival and then she’d had respites of time. The year with McKay-Taggart hadn’t been reality. This was reality.

  She turned to her right and leapt over the balcony wall, adrenaline pumping through her system like a freight train. Immediately to her right was the fourth floor balcony suite. She threw her arms out, almost missing it.

  “Goddamn it!” she heard Taggart yelling.

  But she couldn’t think about him right now. She barely caught the edge of the balcony, her knees smashing into the railing. No time to think about pain. She let it go, focusing on one thing only. She pulled herself up and threw one of her throbbing legs over the railing, making it to the floor. Without a second to breathe, she was on her feet again and happy that the hotel believed in French doors. She kicked with all her might right in the middle, where the laws of physics were on her side. The door slammed open and she ran through paying absolutely no attention to the man and woman who were probably really fucking shocked to have their midday tryst interrupted by an intruder.

  She ignored them, the door to the hallway her only goal. There were three men who would be following her, but she had to think about Simon and Jesse, too. They wouldn’t stay on the sidelines, and the McKay-Taggart group believed in communications. Taggart would have already told his whole team that she was on the move. She needed to go out the back or find a hidey-hole. She needed to get to the street. She could lose herself on the street, hop on the train, and disappear into the city.

  Her mind moved a hundred miles an hour as she slammed out of the suite and into the hallway. She had no doubt one of them would be hard on her ass. She sprinted down the hall to her right because it made more sense to go to her left. The elevators were to her left, but she was looking for the stairs at the far end of the hotel.

  She took a turn, but she could hear someone behind her. There was no way to mask the sound of feet beating against the floor at a dead run.

  She had to be faster. She turned on the heat, forgetting about the ache, neglecting the pain. It was easy to forget the physical, but the sight of Jesse putting his arms wide and yelling for her to take him out wouldn’t go away. She ran without thought to the way her lungs burned.

  She could hear the man behind her getting closer. The door to the stairs was ahead. She saw it. She could make it. Distraction. It was what she needed. She hit the door and then stopped, swiveling on her bare feet. She held the door slightly open, waiting for the inevitable.

  Human nature was her friend. When barreling through a door, almost no one used his or her bodies to slam a door open. It was normal and natural for a hand to press through first, and she used it to her advantage. The minute she saw that hand start to slip through the door in an attempt to push it open, she slammed her body weight against it and caught the arm with a hard crunch. She was rewarded with a shout and a moan, but she doubted she’d done more than bruise him.

  “Goddamn it, Phoebe!”

  She took off again. That hadn’t been Taggart. She recognized Jake Dean’s low growl and knew he wouldn’t let a little pain stop him. She couldn’t stay in the stairwell. She needed cover and she wasn’t going to get it here.

  She flew out the door that led to the fourth floor and immediately knew she’d gotten lucky. Phoebe had been in the business long enough to know skill wasn’t enough. She needed luck and the ability to see the possibility of that big cleaning cart in front of her. Most people would see an obstacle to be avoided, but Phoebe saw something more. She saw sweet, sweet chaos.

  As Dean bounded out of the stairwell, she tipped over the cart, spraying the entire hall with toilet paper rolls, fresh towels, and mini toiletries.

  But what was a little chaos when she could make big chaos?

  “Help! Help! Please don’t let him kill me!” Phoebe screamed as she ran past the shocked maid. “He’s trying to kill me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t before!” Dean yelled as he tried to maneuver through the ruin.

  Phoebe ran even as doors opened and she could hear people calling for security and the police.

  Yes, she might have to deal with them, but she suspected it would be far easier to get away from a couple of cops than it would be to slip past Taggart and his boys.

  “We’re about to have guests,” she heard Dean say.

  She could practically hear Taggart cursing her name.

  An elevator opened in front of her.

  “Hurry!” a masculine voice cried out.

  Thank god for helpful bystanders. She took off and managed to make it into the elevator right before the doors closed.

  She dragged air into her lungs, her body against the back of the elevator. She felt it start to move. “Thank you so much. My boyfriend went a little psychotic.” She realized something was wrong. Why were they going up instead of down?

  “Oh, sweetie, that’s no way to talk about Jake. He’s not psychotic. He’s just grumpy most of the time,” Adam Miles said with a grin on his face. He also had a needle in his hand. “Now, do you want to go the hard way or the easy way? Seriously, you s
hould try the easy way. This is some good shit and that way you don’t have to listen to Jake yelling about you breaking his arm or deal with Ian’s really poor driving. The man has road rage. Now come to Papa and we’ll have you out in no time at all.”

  Shit. She hadn’t even thought about Adam.

  She kicked out, trying to catch him in the gut, but he sidestepped her and before she could move, his arm wrapped around her and she felt the sting of the needle going in.

  The world immediately started going hazy and soft. Adam was right. That was some good shit.

  “Yeah, I got her. I know. You always underestimate me because I’m the pretty one. Meet me on six. I’ve got a way out.” He easily picked her up, and she could see him looking down at her. “I hope you survive this, Phoebe. Serena really likes you.”

  She could feel tears slipping out of her eyes. So soft. She’d gotten so fucking soft. “Like her, too.” Something. She had to say something before the very nice fog took her. “Save Jesse. Try again. They will try again.”

  And then everything was blissful darkness.

  * * * *

  Jesse looked up and down the street, but no one seemed to notice the big van stopped in front of the hotel. Traffic moved around them. Everything out here seemed perfectly normal, but Jesse was focused on what was happening in that hotel. Nothing was normal in there. Normal had just been blown out of the water.

  “You know you’re about to get the lecture of a lifetime,” Simon said, opening the doors on the van. It was custom made, with bench seating in the back on either side and plenty of room for equipment. It reminded Jesse of a military vehicle. Tag was as well prepared as any unit Jesse had ever served in, but he supposed one could take the Green Beret out of the Army but you couldn’t take the Army out of the Green Beret.

  The side of the van was decorated with a magnetic sign that they could easily exchange before an op. For this particular mission, they’d chosen the sign that read Clean Freaks Laundry Services. Yep, they’d let Tag design the signs. There was also a Master Painting Crew sign, Dig It Deep Plumbers, Little Bro Catering, and Adam’s Dog Grooming Services. But it looked like they were in the laundry business today.