You_Only_Love_Twice_ARE

by Lexi Blake

  “There’s the identity of whoever he’s working with,” Ten agreed. “I’m waiting on Chelsea to get back to me with Ace’s files and the name of who recommended him. It’s going to take some patience. Apparently they wiped his files when he died. She swears nothing is ever really gone. I have to hope she and Adam can figure it out.”

  “I’m worried about you going to DC.” She wasn’t sure what waited there for him.

  He shrugged. “What are they going to do to me? At least they’re bringing me home if they’re burning me.”

  Disavowed. Alone. She hated to think about it. The Agency had been Ten’s family for a very long time. But being burned wasn’t what scared her. “And if they’re bringing you home to do more than fire you? Ten, we don’t know what we’ve stepped into.”

  “Assassination? Nah. It’s easier to discredit me. I have too many people who would give a shit if I died.” He stopped for a moment, a huff coming out of his mouth before he laughed. “Holy shit. That’s what he was doing. That old son of a bitch. I always wondered.”

  “What?”

  “Dad. I always wondered why. He wasn’t tasked by the Agency to find young recruits. He did it on his own. He grew up without a family. His parents died when he was in high school and he didn’t have siblings. It was precisely why he was recruited. Smart, excellent deductive reasoning skills, and no ties. It’s why we were told not to talk much about considering each other family. He didn’t want them to know we had too many ties. He took three kids who had no one and nothing and gave them the only world he understood. But he didn’t put us in there alone. He gave us each other.”

  “The Agency would have written Jamie off.”

  “I couldn’t because he’s my brother. And they won’t kill me because you would never let it lie.”

  Because her love would protect him. “I’m not the only one. Taggart, for all his flaws, would take on the Agency for you. You’re the only one who ever thought you were alone. You had a whole family standing around you and you’re right. Dad gave us that. He’s still protecting us even after he’s gone.” She reached out and took Ten’s hand. “So don’t tell me you don’t know how to be a dad. You learned from the very best.”

  “We’ll get through this, Phoebe. I’m going to make sure this goes away one way or another,” Ten promised.

  There was the sound of a crack and Phoebe whipped her head around.

  Ten stood. “That was a semi.” Ten reached behind his back and came up with a SIG Sauer in his hand. Her brother was never unarmed. “Stay here.”

  There was another volley of gunfire and then the sound of a woman screaming. Ten opened the door to the hallway and disappeared, his lean body moving against the wall.

  “What the fuck?” Hutch had his boxers on and seemed to have only stopped long enough to grab his weapon. And he’d been having a nice dream, so it seemed. Or the sound of gunfire in the middle of the night got him hard. It could be either with him.

  Theo was right behind him, though he’d managed to put on a pair of sweats. “It’s coming from Kamdar’s room. We need to move. You have a piece?”

  She hadn’t brought her gun out when she’d come to talk to Ten. She’d thought she was safe in this ridiculously expensive hotel, but naturally she was proven wrong. “No.”

  “Take my backup.” Because Theo apparently slept with two guns. He handed her a semi and then he and Hutch started for the door. She followed, grateful that Jesse was a heavy sleeper. No matter what she said, she hated the idea of him being in danger. She wouldn’t ask him to quit. It was a part of who he was, but she would definitely use any excuse she could to let him sleep so he didn’t have a chance to get shot.

  The outer room was complete chaos. There was smoke and suddenly the detector went off.

  “Everyone calm down!” Ten yelled.

  Erin was in the middle of it, waving her hand to disperse the smoke. “Some asshole set off a smoke bomb outside the king’s room.”

  Theo’s gun came down at his side as he stared at Erin. “What were you doing in his room?”

  Kamdar stood in the middle of it all, his big chest on display. He wore nothing but a towel wrapped around his lean hips. “She was protecting me from harm. This is all a ridiculous prank. Everyone get back into their beds. It’s too early to deal with protesters.”

  “I heard gunfire.” Simon joined the group. He’d pulled on a pair of slacks and his dress shirt was open. Like everyone else, he was carrying a gun. It was likely the best-armed floor of the hotel.

  “I heard it, too. What happened? Did someone take a shot?” Ten was down on one knee, inspecting the box someone had left outside Kamdar’s door.

  “One of Kamdar’s bodyguards got a little freaked out. I think he thought it was a real bomb or something biological,” Erin replied. “And I wasn’t sleeping with Kamdar. Not that it’s any of your business, Taggart.”

  “She is right. There was no sleeping involved,” Kamdar said with a solemn look on his face.

  “And this was definitely biological.” Ten grimaced as he stood back up. “It’s shit in a bag someone lit on fire. What the hell is going on?”

  Kamdar shook his head. “The oilmen, they do not like me. I’m too handsome, far too smart. They think they can scare me off with their shittings, but they are wrong. I will simply take their biological waste and use it to power my vehicles. That will show them. Come along, beautiful. Let’s celebrate our victory over their waste.”

  Erin’s face went as red as her hair and she started in on the king. “Listen here. I don’t care how royal your ass is…”

  Something was wrong. It didn’t make a lick of sense.

  “I’m going to review the tapes, but this looks like some sort of practical joke.” Ten looked up at the fire detectors. They blared through the space. “Can we get these turned off? I can’t think.”

  Simon moved beside her. “Where’s Jesse?”

  “He’s asleep.”

  Why would anyone risk a practical joke in a building where everyone was armed to the teeth?

  Simon looked back at their suite of rooms. “In your room? The one that’s farthest from the lifts?”

  She nodded. It was the farthest from the elevators and everything. “Why?”

  But she’d already started to answer her own question. If it wasn’t a joke, then what was it? A distraction. Everyone should have been in bed. She and Jesse had the room farthest from the king’s. She doubted Jesse would even have heard the gunfire if he’d been awake, but the outer bedrooms would have heard it easily.

  Phoebe turned back and started to run. Her heart pounded in her chest. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be because they would have to have gone through the hallway. She would have noticed someone dragging a body down the hallway. No one had gone past her so it was all right.

  “Phoebe?” Ten was behind her.

  “Jesse. This was about Jesse.” Simon kept up with them.

  She just ran. She ran past the living area and back to the room where she and Jesse had become man and wife. Maybe not in the eyes of the law, but they’d bonded in their hearts. Her husband was sleeping and she was going to laugh because she was so damn paranoid.

  Except she wasn’t. She flung open the door and the bed was empty. There was a huge hole cut in the window and she could see the ropes that had allowed the team to lower the scaffold down.

  She watched in horror as a helicopter flew past and then moved quickly into the distance.

  Jesse was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He was stuck again. Damn. He knew this dream. It started with the world going hazy. His eyes wouldn’t focus. He could shake his head, but somehow the world remained fuzzy. His stomach twisted and that was when he realized that whatever he’d eaten was about to come back up.

  He was on his back. That wasn’t good. Even with the world spinning around him, he knew he couldn’t stay on his back. With sheer force of will, he turned just before the bile got to be too much.<
br />
  So fucking weak. He needed to make it to the bathroom, but his gut wouldn’t wait. He got to his knees and then let it go. He shuddered and shook, but when it was done, he finally felt the tiniest bit better.

  He moved away from the mess he’d made and tried to focus. This time it was a little easier.

  “Phoebe?” He seemed to have some sort of flu. Or he’d eaten something he shouldn’t have. He couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t he remember? The last thing he could recall was Phoebe in his arms. She’d cried herself to sleep, but it had been a good thing. It had been healing.

  Where was she?

  Why was the ground under him so hard? Their room had plush carpet. Everything about it was luxurious, so why had his knees banged against what felt like concrete? He forced himself to really still. His eyesight finally stabilized and he could see the ground beneath him. Definitely concrete and not the pretty, stained kind. This was the color of dull steel.

  He wasn’t in his room.

  His back was to something. His hands were free so he reached around. A wall and then to his left was metal. Through the haze he recognized a cot. He’d been laid on the cot in a room he didn’t recognize.

  “Hello, Mr. Murdoch. It’s a pleasure to see you.”

  He was going to be sick again. That voice. Yes, this was a nightmare and he needed to wake up because he was going to scare Phoebe. He could get violent when he dreamed, but since he’d started sleeping with her, he hadn’t had the dream. Not even once.

  His hands shook. Fine trembles that were as much about fear as they were the shaky state of his body. He was afraid. He’d always hated that, didn’t want people to see it. After he’d come home the first time and started seeing Eve and then Kai, he’d told them he wasn’t afraid. It was a lie meant to save face. And then Ian had sat him down with a beer one night and told him that only a fucking idiot wasn’t afraid and that fear was a gift to help the intelligent creatures of the world not get their asses blown away.

  So he was willing to admit just how scared he was and somehow in accepting it, he was able to control it.

  “I see you’re not as used to our cocktails as once you were. I’ll have them dial down the dosage for next time. I don’t want you to be sick. I need you good and healthy for our training sessions.” The voice had a deep, almost hypnotic quality to it. Just the sound of it sent him back years to that horrible place where he wasn’t Jesse Murdoch anymore, to where he was someone’s dog to be beaten and abused.

  His vision started to fade again. That was when he realized this might not be a dream. In his dreams, he always stayed in control and fought. He was a better version of himself in his dreams. In real life, he retreated and let some fucking beast take over. Or he gave in to the drugs and pretended nothing was wrong.

  “You’re wondering if you’re dreaming,” the voice mused. His shoes rang against the concrete as he moved closer. “Aren’t you? Let me ask you this. What would be worse? Learning that this is the only reality? That the last few years were only a dream brought on by the narcotics I gave you? In that scenario you’ve really lost nothing, but you gained nothing as well. Your woman was simply a dream. Or is it worse if she’s reality and you’ve lost her?”

  This was what the fucker did. He loved to put scenarios out there. He could talk all day.

  He could talk all day.

  If the Caliph was talking, then time was passing, precious time Jesse needed.

  “I don’t know. I think she was real. It felt real.” Phoebe was real. She was the realest thing in the world. He looked around, trying to take stock. He was weak now, but there might come a time when he could try to get out of here. “Is she here?”

  He fought back the urge to dive deep. He had to stay in control. He had to figure out what had happened. Where was Phoebe? How had he gotten here?

  A small room. There was a door, but he could see it was sturdy, likely reinforced. He glanced around. One window, but it was barred. There was nothing in the room at all except a cot, a bucket, and shackles attached to the far wall. He could only imagine what that was for.

  Hani al Fareed looked down at him. Yes, it was the younger of the two brothers. Now that Jesse was close, he could match the man to his file. He focused on the man, really seeing him for the first time he could remember. The Caliph was in his forties, with a handsome face and cold eyes. He’d taken off his white robe and was dressed more casually in loose white cotton pants and a tunic. “Would you be frightened if she was here?”

  Sometimes honesty was best with the Caliph. He tended to see through the lies, and there was punishment until he got the answer he wanted. Jesse nodded. “Yes.”

  There was no way to hide the fact that he loved Phoebe. The last thing he remembered he’d been in bed with her, so they’d either killed her or left her behind.

  If Phoebe was dead, he would let that beast out. It wouldn’t matter anymore. Nothing would matter if Phoebe was gone because she was the one. Kai had said something about his love saving him, but it was his love for Phoebe and only Phoebe. If she was gone, he wasn’t sure what would happen, but it would be nasty and bloody and wouldn’t end well.

  “You like the female? Perhaps that’s a good place to start. You know I have no formal training in psychology, but it’s been an obsession of mine since childhood. I would watch my father train dogs. People are like dogs, though they often require more pain to learn a lesson. You know if you properly train a dog, you can give them as much pain as they can take and they will still defend you.”

  “Like Ace.”

  “Yes, much like your brother.” The Caliph stared at him for a moment. “You’re an interesting subject. I wasn’t able to modify your behavior before. I believe I simply didn’t have enough time, though some of my colleagues claim you’re simply too stupid to change. Maybe I didn’t have the proper motivation. If I bring out your female sexual partner, would that change? Would you do my bidding if it meant she was safe from pain? From rape? Rape is always a good way to control a female, but oftentimes it can only be used once to control a male partner. At least in my world, that’s true. Women lose their value when they’re tarnished. How many times could I fuck her before you would see her as a whore?”

  That was an easy answer. “I don’t know a number big enough.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t understand Western men. You don’t see the true and only value of a woman. You marry non-virgins and then expect them to be faithful. You’re all fools. And no, I do not have her. She was not in bed with you when we took you, so she escaped, though now I think that was a mistake on my part. Do you think she was cheating on you? It’s what women of your culture do.”

  Jesse didn’t give a flying fuck what that asshole thought about his culture. He valued Phoebe for more than her sex, more than his singular possession of her body. He loved her soul and the Caliph couldn’t touch that, so no matter what happened to her, he would still love her, still want her.

  And she would want him.

  The truth settled over him. The Caliph could do his worst. He could beat him, batter him, get him hooked on drugs again, but as long as he held on to his soul, Phoebe would love him. Phoebe would stay with him. She would be there when he came out of this.

  The deep need to regress, to give over to the darkness, faded. It always seemed to be there, something he had to fight back, but now that place was filled with something else. Her. He didn’t need the darkness if he had her.

  She was alive. The Caliph rarely lied. His truths tended to be the things of nightmares, and he’d once told Jesse that the master didn’t bother to lie to his dog. Phoebe was alive and that meant Ten would protect her.

  And Simon would look for him. His partner would do everything in his power to find him. That Brit wouldn’t stop. The only question was could he keep Phoebe from getting in trouble because Jesse doubted she would stop either.

  “No. She wasn’t cheating on me.” She’d likely gotten up to talk to her brother, to explain why she w
asn’t going back to DC.

  He needed to give them time. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but they were likely still in the UAE. Simon would have his best shot if he could find Jesse before they took him to Saudi or some other country. Jesse had to find a way to give his partner that time.

  The Caliph liked to talk. The Caliph didn’t bother to lie. Why not buy a little time with some conversation? He had a few questions for the man.

  “Why bother with me? Why come and get me at all? Was it about concealing your identity? You know I can talk all I like. No one will believe me.” He had a unique opportunity for information gathering.

  “Why did you fake your own death? What was the purpose of that?”

  “I thought you would send someone else after me. And I thought you might avoid the conference if you knew I would be there. If I was dead, I couldn’t be there. That is why you sent Ace to kill me, right?”

  His lips curled up slightly. “I didn’t want to kill you. I’m sure that surprises you, but the choice to kill you was not my own, but my business partner’s. When I learned that you would be here in Dubai, I was excited again. It’s been years since I had such a challenge. No. I didn’t want to kill you. I wanted to collect what was mine and finish the job. However, I agreed to send your brother after you to appease my partner.”

  His brother. God, al Fareed didn’t even understand the meaning of the word. “Your business partner was afraid I would recognize you?”

  One shoulder shrugged as though it was not of great matter to him. “Again, I didn’t believe it would truly harm me, but apparently you have some powerful friends now. Don’t worry. My partner is busy discrediting them. Once their reputations are in threads, no one will listen anymore.”

  “You’re behind the Agency recalling Ten.”

  “No. I have nothing to do with the CIA. I find them to be distasteful. I leave that to my partner. Note, I do not call him my friend. He is distasteful as well, but compromises must be made. Once I have all I need, I’ll cut ties with him in the most profound way possible. I will enjoy it. Now, soon we will be traveling. I think it’s time for you to come to my home. I can take my time there, properly assist you in understanding your true place in the world.”