Firestorm

by Rachel Grant

  Except he couldn’t.

  “Will do.” He stepped outside without looking back.

  15

  The tiny house was achingly silent when Cal left, and part of Savvy wondered if he’d return. This was his chance to escape. He could drive to the airport and catch a flight back to Djibouti, free and clear.

  She couldn’t really blame him if he did. She hadn’t earned his loyalty. He had no reason to believe she’d really planned to send him back to protect him from fallout should her mission fail. But still, the idea of him leaving her—no matter how deserved—triggered an ache.

  Sergeant First Class Cassius Callahan was everything she wanted in a man and partner, but he was also the one she’d known she would never have for more than a passing fling. Until he’d made love to her in a way that made her think he might want more.

  Then her deception killed his feelings faster than a supersonic bullet.

  She shook her head to clear it. She needed to comb through Lubanga’s files. Whether Cal returned or not, she needed to do her job and figure out who was friend and who was foe.

  Files that were written in Lingala she dropped into a folder for Cal to read. She could translate the French ones herself but was most interested in the English ones, as that was the common language between Gorev, Lubanga, and Fitzsimmons.

  An antique clock on the sideboard ticked away the minutes in the otherwise silent room as she searched the files for references to the evangelical televangelist. But she couldn’t simply search on terms because, as she soon learned, many of the documents had been converted to JPEG files. They were images, not searchable text. An extra layer of security for a very cautious man. But then, his laptop didn’t even have a Wi-Fi connection or LAN port.

  Finally, she got lucky and opened an image file that mentioned Fitzsimmons. And herself.

  Versailles métro – 5 Juin

  revenu

  A Fitzsimmons

  N Drugov

  * * *

  dépense

  militaire

  R Gorev

  F Lange

  C Dominick

  A Ravissant

  Revenu and dépense were easy: income and expenses. The names were obvious. This had to be instructions for someone who moved his money around. June fifth was two days away. Versailles subway was a lot more confusing. Was something happening in France on the fifth? As far as she knew, the city of Versailles didn’t have a subway.

  She stared at her name. Times New Roman font. So very familiar and yet utterly baffling. Why was she an expense? Was he paying someone to get rid of her?

  A sound at the door startled her. She hadn’t heard Cal drive up and expected him to be gone much longer, given the time it would take to drive the necessary SDR. She glanced toward the door. Her body jolted with the force of a lightning strike at seeing Harry in the doorway.

  Twenty minutes into the SDR, with no sign of a tail, a point that nagged at Cal came to the forefront of his mind.

  Harrison Evers was in Dar es Salaam.

  Savvy had been told Harry would fly back to the US with Seth. But the agent hadn’t. Instead, he’d gone to Tanzania. To complete his mission of taking out the minister, or was he operating on other orders?

  That Seth had lied to Savvy about Harry returning to the US was just another clue as to who the leaker was within the CIA. Also worth noting: Seth’s name wasn’t on the list at all. But then, Cal was certain he was the author. He had access to every person’s location, including Brie Stewart’s. The Agency had needed it for follow-up interviews.

  Cal pulled onto a side street and parked. He had a bad feeling about leaving Savvy alone for too long. He didn’t have time for a lengthy Surveillance Detection Route. He needed to get back to her, fast.

  But he also owed Bastian a call.

  He dialed Bastian, but his call went to voice mail. “Bas, I just saw your name and Brie’s name on a list found on Jean Paul Lubanga’s computer. It had your location and listed Brie as being in Kentucky. It might be a good idea for her to go off the grid for a bit, until we know what’s going on. Maybe she can get her brother Rafe to pony up for a security detail. She could hire retired Special Forces operators. I think Martinez is working for an outfit in Cincinnati. I gotta go. Sorry to drop this on you without more info, but that’s really all I’ve got. I’ll call again when I can.”

  He hit the End button and dropped the phone on the seat. His soldier’s instinct told him he needed to get back to their rental house right away.

  Savvy bolted to her feet, knocking over her chair. She moved fast, but Harry had the element of surprise. Plus he was the one man on the planet who rattled her, which slowed her reaction time. She stumbled on the legs of the chair as he came at her fullbore.

  Before she knew it, she was pinned to the floor next to the sofa. She managed to raise her knee and launched him off her, then charged, following him into the wall.

  A lamp on the side table toppled over and shattered on the floor. She reached for a shard of glass and held it to Harry’s throat.

  His eyes widened with fear. Probably because he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to slice him open. She had a million questions, but only one was important in this moment in time. “How did you find me?”

  When he didn’t answer, she ran the razor-sharp edge along his jaw, opening a deep cut, then returned the blade to his carotid. “How did you find me?” she repeated.

  “Your computer,” he said, barely moving his mouth so as not to bump the shard. “I installed a program back at Camp Citron.

  Oh hell. She’d thought the computer was safe because it was clean—a new one she’d picked up just days before the op. It hadn’t even been on her desk when Harry and Seth had been there. He must’ve spotted it in her bag in her office.

  And he must’ve installed the program while Seth shared a drink with her at Barely North. Pain at that betrayal made her dizzy. She tried to hide her reaction.

  “I thought you’d figured it out when it stopped pinging yesterday morning. I was surprised when it suddenly went off an hour ago.”

  But of course, the reason it hadn’t pinged was that the battery was dead. Otherwise, he would’ve found them while she and Cal slept. They’d been saved by a dead battery.

  Harry struck with the speed of a snake, clamping her hand on the shard, cutting her. Blood seeped between her fingers before he released her hand and extracted the sharp fragment, then tossed it across the room.

  She’d lost her advantage, so she aimed for Harry’s eyes with her long nails. He shoved her backward. They rolled on the floor, through the broken lamp, which sliced into her back. She slammed into the table, toppling the computer that had given her away.

  “Was the Green Beret better in bed than me, Savannah?” One of Harry’s hands closed around her wrists, pinning them above her head.

  She kneed him in the groin, but he blocked it. “Why are you here? What is your mission?”

  Blood dripped from his chin onto her face. “To kill you, of course. And make it look like your pet Green Beret did it.”

  “Who are you working for?” No way was Harry the mastermind of this shitshow.

  “Sweetheart, I’m the boss here.”

  “Right. You’re nothing but a toady.”

  He backhanded her hard, connecting with the bruise she’d gotten from Cal last night and making her head swim as pain pulsed through her skull.

  He stared down at her, his glee evident in the light in his eyes. He enjoyed inflicting pain, liked having her trapped and afraid. “It’s a shame I don’t have more time to do this slowly.”

  She managed to catch her breath as the pain settled to a dull roar in her brain. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “It was never about you, sweetheart. I don’t give two shits about Freya Lange or your mission to avenge your family.”

  “I don’t want to avenge—”

  He twisted her nipple, causing pain to pulse outward from her chest. “Whatever. I don
’t give a fuck about any of that. You were going to fail the spec ops training. You knew it all was a test. Fake. You couldn’t stay in character because you knew your life didn’t really depend on it. So I took your training to the next level. It was no longer a game without real risk. You had to submit or lose everything. I created Savannah. I showed you your weakness. Gave you your strength. You would be nothing without me.”

  She bucked against his hold. “You don’t get to claim one ounce of who I am today.”

  “Oh, but I do.” With his free hand, he stroked her cheek. “One of my specialties is taking female operators to the next level. Seth always assigned me the tough cases.”

  The pain in her head was lost to the bile rising up her esophagus. The worst part—worse than the ceramic shard digging into her back, worse than the man who loomed above her, holding her wrists in a viselike grip—was the fear that there was a kernel of truth to his words.

  Had she been on the path to failing the training? Had being raped somehow made her a better operator?

  Fuck that.

  Even as she wanted to scream, her brain served up memories of Seth implying as much over the years. She’d brushed his subtle words off as the view of an older man who couldn’t possibly relate or understand. She’d given him a pass on the misogynistic take because he was her mentor.

  Pain surged, making her whole body go tight with rage. Seth had been behind the assault and had used his mental leverage to get her to accept the rape, to remain quiet about it. His underlying message, the one she’d kept her eyes and ears closed to for five long years: rape had been her due for wanting to join the man’s world of elite special operators.

  “You were one of my best success stories,” Harry said. “It’s a shame I have to end you.”

  She struggled against him, but he held her down. “Why? Why kill me?”

  “You side-stepped your chain of command and convinced SOCOM to go after Drugov.”

  She tried to control her breathing. She needed to calm down. She could fight Harry as long as her emotions were in control. She needed to be able to think. It was no wonder Harry had been sent after her. Seth knew what being around him did to her mind.

  “You’re no good if you can’t be controlled.” He yanked at her waistband, pulling down the yoga pants. “So now I will end you as I fuck you.” He wedged her legs apart and rammed a knee between her thighs, keeping her legs spread with his own even though the waistband of the stretchy pants was caught on her knees.

  His grip on her wrists tightened. Instead of fighting, she forced her body to relax even as she felt him opening his fly.

  She waited. Pliant. Trapped by clothes, his weight, and his hand on her wrists. He shifted to insert his hips between her thighs. His grip on her wrists loosened, almost imperceptibly, but she’d been waiting for it. She surged upward with her whole body, breaking her hands free. She slammed her wrists into the cut on his face.

  The blow connected, throwing him off-balance and giving her fist an open shot at his balls. His body curled inward even as his weight fell full force on top of her, trapping one of her hands between their bodies. With her free hand she grabbed the flap of skin that hung off his jaw, digging in with her nails so the slick, bloody skin wouldn’t slip through her fingers, and yanked.

  He howled with pain and rose up, freeing her trapped hand. She groped along the floor for something to hit him with and came up with another shard from the lamp. She plunged it into his throat.

  Shock replaced the pain on his face as blood spurted from the open artery onto her face and neck. She shoved him aside, crawling out from under him as he tried to stanch the flow with his fingers.

  But it was too late. By the time she was free of his weight, he was slumped on the floor, blood loss too rapid for him to do anything but stare up at her, his dick limp and face showing agony until his eyes glazed over.

  16

  Cal stood in the doorway, his heart in his throat as he took in the scene. Savvy sat in the middle of the room, next to the dead body of CIA SAD operator Harrison Evers. Blood drenched her T-shirt. Her yoga pants were caught on her thighs. Evers’s pants were around his knees, his flaccid prick making it clear what he’d been doing when Savvy overpowered him and opened an artery.

  Cal crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. Jesus, if he’d just been a few minutes faster. “I’m so sorry.” He murmured the words in an endless loop of soft apology.

  She said nothing, just wrapped her arms around his waist and held on. At least he could give her this. There’d been no one to comfort her after the first time she was raped, and he hadn’t been able to hold her after Harry attacked her on base.

  Except, they had to leave, before someone showed up looking for Harry. Reluctantly, he released her. “I’m sorry, Savvy, but we need to get out of here.”

  She nodded, her eyes still glazed.

  “Get changed,” he said, “while I load the car.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’ve got his blood all over you. You should probably take a shower. But make it fast.”

  She shook her head again.

  “I’ll take care of everything while you get cleaned up. I’ll put Harry in the trunk.”

  She pulled up the yoga pants, her eyes still dazed, but finally, she spoke. “No.”

  “We can’t leave him here.”

  She shook her head, and this time met his gaze. He could see reason in her eyes, behind the haze of shock at the assault. “We need to find his car. Put him in the trunk. He probably parked somewhere in the neighborhood.”

  She’d gone from shocked to full operator mode, and Cal couldn’t be more grateful. “Sounds like a plan.”

  She patted down the pockets of Evers’s pants and held up keys and a USB drive. “When we have time, I’ll plug this into my computer, see what was so important he carried it on him.” In a flash, her faint smile of triumph disappeared. “Shit! My computer.” She grabbed it from where it lay on the floor, stepped into the kitchen, then, to his complete shock, smashed it against the marble countertop.

  “What—”

  “He tracked us through a program he loaded in the computer. He must’ve done it after the meeting in my office. I went to Barely North—to find you—and Seth followed me, convinced me to join him for a drink. Gave plenty of time for Harry to screw with my laptop.” The computer had cracked but not broken. She pressed the open hinge to her knee, snapping the screen from the keyboard. “Someone might have access to the hard disk even now. Can’t remove the battery, so destroying the hard drive is best. I should shoot it. And burn it. It’s the only way to make sure the CIA can’t retrieve the data.”

  “You can’t fire a gun in this neighborhood.”

  She nodded, but still, she ran to the bedroom and returned with her pistol.

  “Savvy!”

  She released the magazine so it dropped on the floor, then checked the chamber and dumped the bullet before slamming the butt of the empty gun into the keyboard. She repeated the blows on the keyboard until she was able to pry out the hard drive.

  She held up the disk, triumphant, sweating, and covered in blood. “We need to buy a new computer. I can download Lubanga’s files from the cloud again.”

  “Doesn’t the CIA have access to Lubanga’s files already? You used a CIA device to upload to the cloud.”

  “The upload device is just the tool—a conduit—connecting computer to cloud storage. I configured where the files would go before we left Camp Citron. I didn’t use any official CIA online storage because authentication protocols to log…well, it’s CIA. It can’t be done in a hurry like I was to copy Lubanga’s files. I set up a temporary storage account, only I know how to access.”

  He nodded. If the CIA didn’t know where Lubanga’s files were, then they couldn’t use her subsequent downloads to track their location. Good. “You need to shower, and we need to dispose of this body. Then we need to get the hell out of Dar and figure out how we’re going to
get back to Camp Citron.”

  “I can’t go back to Camp Citron. He’s… I’m pretty sure he’s working for Seth.” She ran a hand over her face. “Fuck. I killed a fellow CIA SAD operator. No one will believe it was self-defense. Not without proof that Harry came here to kill me, that he’s the traitor.”

  “You have me. I’ll back you.”

  “You weren’t here.”

  She was right. He actually had no idea what had gone on in this room. All he knew was he’d found her kneeling over a dead body. The room indicated she and Harry had fought. Her pants were down, Harry’s genitals exposed. Cal could make a reasonable guess, but there was nothing to stop the CIA from saying she’d staged it. “Let’s deal with the body, then decide our next move.”

  “Use the key remote to find the car. Drive it through the gate. We’ll put him in the trunk. We can drive out to the savannah and leave it. Him.”

  “You shower. I’ll find his car.”

  She nodded, and he grabbed the key.

  He paused by the door, then turned and pulled her against him again. This time, he kissed her, then pressed his face to her neck. He could feel her pulse against his cheek. She smelled of blood and sweat and soap from her earlier shower. Her chest brushed his each time she inhaled.

  Freya Lange was alive and breathing with a rapidly beating heart, no thanks to him. “You won’t take the fall for this. I won’t let that happen.”

  “Harry said he was going to make it look like you’d killed me.”

  He lifted his head and nodded in resignation. He’d expected that. He ran a finger over the bright welt on her cheek. It was worse than it had been earlier. Evers must’ve hit her in the same spot. Rage and protectiveness surged. He looked at the dead body on the carpet. “Is there any chance he was working alone?”