Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming

by Glenna Sinclair

  The woman frowned, clearly surprised by that information. "It did happen. Two hours ago. And whoever had access to that information is likely your mole."

  The woman walked away before Sutherland could say anything else.

  The only people who had access to that information, however, was her and Kirkland. And David. No one else.

  How could one of them be the mole?

  Chapter 14

  Clint

  I sat in my office, staring at the blank form I was required to fill out after an operation. I'd already spoken to the desk sergeant in Casper, covered Clint Barrow's ass. The place was in such chaos because of the ambush that no one had even noticed he was missing—that I was missing. That was a point in my favor, but I couldn't help but feel as though it were some sort of comment on my entire life.

  There was rarely anyone sitting around missing me.

  It was hard to have a personal life when you were living your life going from one undercover assignment to another. I'd seen other agents attempt to get married and have a normal life outside of the job, but the job was a life. I'd had a plan. I was going to be the agent to arrest Jack Mahoney. I was going to be the hero. And then I was going to retire and I was going to go find her, and I was going to see where things went from there.

  Funny how things changed.

  I couldn't stop thinking about Ryan. Petite, beautiful, Ryan. All the stories I'd heard about her before I finally set eyes on her, I thought she was easy to categorize. A slut in the first degree. Who gives a shit about a girl like that, a girl who clearly had no self-respect. But then I saw her and... shit, she was just a lost soul like the rest of us. Anyone with eyes could see that.

  I believed her, that story she told me about the Marine boyfriend. I believed the pain was real. There was just something about her I could relate to. Only a lost soul could recognize another.

  No one here knew much about me. My life started the moment I joined the Army, according to them. I was a good soldier. I was an obedient agent. I worked hard and kept my nose clean. That's all they wanted from me. But there was more, a childhood so fucked up most of these people would call me a liar if I told them half of it. But Ryan... I got the feeling she'd understand. How rare was it for me to find someone I could relate to, let alone someone I knew would get me? And she was a fucking witness, an obstacle to a job completed.

  Yet, I couldn't stop thinking about her. I was supposed to send a team up to interrogate her, but I wanted her to rest, wanted her to have a short bit of peace before hell began. They would start pushing it soon, but I didn't care. Give the girl an hour's nap.

  I pushed a button on my computer and the monitors from the apartment popped up on my screen. I clicked through them until the bedroom camera that looked down on her face popped up. She was peaceful, for once.

  Annabeth tapped on the office door and let herself in.

  "They want your report."

  "Working on it."

  "And then Conway said he wants you to drop by his office so you can discuss the next step in this case."

  I stared at her, wondering what she really wanted. I knew Annabeth well enough to know she could have just picked up a phone to tell me this. There was something else going on that she hadn't wanted anyone to overhear.

  "Proctor doesn't like having one of Gray Wolf's operatives in the building. I heard him tell one of his people to go up and get her."

  "When?"

  "Not five minutes ago."

  I glanced at the computer screen as I stood. Almost as if she were responding to my movement, Ryan's eyes popped open. I thought I saw a glint of steel as I snatched my gun out of my drawer and ran for the door.

  Annabeth tried to grab my arm as I passed her, but I shook her off. The corridor was empty—which was probably good. I didn't have time to stop and explain myself. Annabeth slipped between the elevator doors as they closed, standing calmly beside me as I shoved my finger into the appropriate floor number over and over again.

  "She'll kill the son of a bitch before he touches her, you know that."

  Annabeth nodded. "I suspect she will."

  "What are they thinking, sending an agent up there?"

  "They think she works for a special ops guy who runs a business that's on the thin line between illegal and respectable."

  "Ash Grayson isn't a criminal."

  Annabeth shrugged. "That still remains unproven."

  "They haven't proven otherwise."

  "That's true, too."

  The elevator door opened. I held the gun at my side, my finger on the trigger, as I approached the apartment door. It was cracked open. I stepped inside, bringing the gun up, checking my bind spots as I slowly made my way inside. The rooms here were empty, dim with the curtains pulled against the mid-afternoon sun. The stairs were clear, light coming from the master bedroom at the top.

  Annabeth had pulled a gun from some unseen spot, holding it in both hands as she followed me to the stairs. I wanted to tell her to stay put, but a little backup probably wasn't a bad idea at this point. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard a thud coming from the bedroom. That's when I began to run.

  Ryan, naked save for the bra and panties the surveillance guy had been so fascinated with, was standing over a man who was prone on the floor, a knife in his chest.

  "Christ!"

  I grabbed a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around Ryan's shoulders just as an alarm sounded. Those same surveillance guys were still doing their job.

  "We have to get out of here."

  "You can't," Annabeth said. "If you leave, they'll think you were here to help her."

  "I was."

  "Clint—"

  "We're leaving. You can help or you can try to stand in our way, but I wouldn't recommend it."

  Annabeth's gun came up, the target set on the center of my chest.

  "There's an emergency exit at the back of the hallway. The camera has been deactivated. Go to the fourth floor, then cut across to the elevator. They'll see you on the camera there, but if you take the first elevator, they can't stop it from the control room. They have to go down to the basement to shut it down and by the time they get there, you'll be in the back alley. There's a car there, a red Mazda. The keys are in the center console."

  "Annabeth—"

  "Hit me. Make it look good so they won't know I'm helping you."

  It took me a second, but I suddenly realized what she was doing. She'd seen this coming. She'd set up our escape.

  "Thank you," I said, slamming the butt of my gun against the side of her head.

  "What the hell is going on here?" Ryan demanded.

  I just shook my head. There was no time to explain.

  We ran out into the hall just as the elevator binged the warning that the doors were about to open. We dove into the back stairwell just as Annabeth said, Ryan clinging to the blanket that was covering her near naked form, racing after my much longer legs that were too fast for her even on the stairs. But I couldn't slow down. I knew these people, knew how ruthless they could be. I was one of them, after all. We couldn't slow down.

  At the fourth floor, we rushed out of the stairwell, me picking up speed and her stumbling to keep up. The elevator seemed to take a lifetime to arrive, but it finally did. We stepped inside, a voice screaming to us from further down the hall as the doors slid closed.

  "You can't escape us, Butler! Where the hell will you go?"

  That was a good damn question.

  In the lobby, we ran. Ryan didn't say a word, she just kept up. Toward the end, she actually outran me, her little legs with such a short stride, but fast as all hell. She jumped into the passenger seat of the Mazda as I was still diving into the driver's seat. I found the keys and got them into the ignition just as Conway stepped out into the center of the alley. I revved the engine and stared him down. For a long moment, I thought he would pull the gun whose butt was inches from his twitching fingers. But then he did a crazy thing: he stepped back out of our
way.

  I gunned the engine and took off, speeding out of the alley and leaving that place behind us as quickly as I could.

  Chapter 15

  Ryan

  I tugged the blanket tighter around me, trying to pretend I couldn't see the blood on my hands or where it had smeared onto the front of the blanket. I'd been asleep, dreaming about home and Trigger, the pony my mother bought for me after she married my stepdad, the pony everyone made fun of me for naming such a common, trite name. But he was mine and I loved him more than anything else in the whole world.

  Everything but Daddy, of course.

  And then I heard a noise, the sound of someone carefully cocking a pistol. It was a distinctive sound I'd heard in my dreams nearly every night since my tour in Afghanistan. You can't do that within a mile of a veteran and not expect a reaction.

  I found the knife I'd stuffed under my pillow and slipped out of bed, hiding in a crouch on the far side of the mattress. For a long time, there was nothing but silence. I thought for a minute that it had been in my head, in my dream. But then I heard the creak of the floorboards outside the bedroom.

  He walked in boldly, clearly expecting me to be asleep in the bed. His eyes widened when they fell on the empty bed. He walked over, yanked the down comforter out of the way, perhaps thinking I was small enough I'd gotten lost in the fluffy folds. When he didn't find me, he backed away, moving back to the doorway.

  "Come out, sweetheart," he said. "I know you're in here. There's nowhere else for you to go."

  When I didn't answer, he slowly began to make his way around the room. He ducked into the bathroom and flipped on the light. I could hear him moving around in there, his shoes making an astonishingly large amount of noise on the tile floor. He even went to the closet, moved around the two items of clothing hanging in there like I could hide behind a folded and hanging pair of slacks.

  "I won't hurt you if you come out from wherever you're hiding," he called as he made his way to the door again. "I just need to talk to you."

  But when I tossed the television remote across the room, the sound enormous as it shattered against the wall, he fired. The bullet came with a rush of air, the impact louder than the shot itself.

  He had a silencer. This guy meant business.

  I had no choice. But that didn't make it any easier.

  I waited until he crossed in front of the end of the bed, his back to me. I launched myself at his back, wrapping my arms around his neck, pulling him back until he lost his balance and crushed me beneath him as he fell onto the bed. We struggled for a long few minutes, but then he lost consciousness, going limp in my arms. I let him go and pushed him to the floor, sliding back against the pillows. I was shaking, my stomach roiling with ugliness.

  Maybe if I'd just stayed on the bed, he would have stayed put until Clint arrived. Maybe if I'd pretended that I didn't know he was still breathing. Maybe... but I didn't know. I got down on the floor and pressed my fingers to his pulse. He wrapped his hands around my neck, trying to suffocate me as I'd nearly done to him. He didn't know about the knife.

  I sank it into his chest, a surprising amount of blood gushing up around the blade, more spitting out of his mouth. I backed away, in shock, standing over him as he struggled with his final breaths.

  And then Clint was there and we were running for our lives.

  I shivered. Clint reached over and touched my knee.

  "We need to find you some clothes and get rid of this car."

  "Who were those people?"

  "I thought they were friends," he said, gripping the wheel with a single hand so tight that his knuckles turned white. "But only one of them was."

  I didn't ask, wasn't sure I would be able to comprehend what he had to say if I did.

  We drove deep into the city, moving down side street after side street. Clint kept looking into the rearview mirror, clearly worried that someone might be following. There was no obvious sign of a tail, but he kept moving from side street to side street anyway. Eventually he pulled into a busy mall parking lot.

  "I don't want to leave you alone."

  I touched his face, but then saw the blood drying on my hand and pulled away, hiding it under the blanket. He pulled it back out and pulled it up to his face, pressing his lips to my palm.

  "I'm going to make this okay for you," he said softly.

  I watched him go, my heart pounding. I had this irrational fear that he wouldn't come back. I couldn't take my eyes from the door he disappeared through, staring at it as though just the power of my stare could make it suddenly open and vomit him out. For a long time, it didn't work. But then it did.

  He slid into the driver's seat and handed me a heavy bag from the shop.

  "I didn't know what you'd want or what size to get."

  "It's okay."

  "There's a car rental place on the other side of the mall. I thought... no one would notice one missing. Not right away."

  "You're a cop."

  He nodded, darkly. "Sometimes things are necessary."

  "I'll remind you of that next time you chew me out for using a fake I.D."

  I shoved my feet into a pair of jeans, struggling to pull them up over my thighs, my hips, in the tight confines of the car. The blouse was easier, a dark blue t-shirt with cutouts in the back. And a leather jacket that was a size too big. It was perfect.

  He'd even thought to grab me a pair of Keds.

  We left the car and headed across the parking lot, pretending to be window shopping as we walked to the rental place. He chose a blue Prius parked some distance from the other cars, clearly waiting to be cleaned before being rented out again. He surprised me with the ease in which he climbed behind the wheel, no regrets evident at all. The keys, conveniently, were hanging from the ignition. He reached over and let me in, pulling out before anyone even noticed we were there. We were on the interstate in seconds, headed north again, back toward Wyoming.

  "Where are we going?"

  He shook his head, his jaw clenched as he struggled with this next move. I let him alone, thought it might be better to allow him to work through what had happened back there in his own way. We'd be home safe soon enough. Maybe then he'd feel comfortable enough to tell me everything he'd clearly been holding back.

  I drifted off to sleep after a while, but the night's events came back to me in a nightmare. I sat up in a rush, my heart pounding. He reached over and lay his hand on my knee, calming me with a simple touch.

  "We need to eat," he said.

  I had no idea where we were, but there was a diner that was brightly lit and inviting. I followed him inside, ducking into the women's room before the waitress could tell us to pick our own seats. The blood was stubborn, dying my skin a healthy pink. I scrubbed long after it was gone, making my skin raw. I needed it gone.

  Clint watched me, his gaze heavy, as I joined him in the dining room.

  "I ordered you a Coke."

  "Thanks."

  He shrugged.

  There weren't many people in the diner, just a couple of truckers at the counter and two bored waitresses. Ours came back not long after I sat, taking our order of burgers and fries like it was the first time she'd heard such an order. When she was gone, Clint picked up a straw wrapper and straightened it out with his thumb, smoothing it against the tabletop.

  "They'll be after us both, now," he said.

  "Who are they?"

  He shook his head, his eyes clouded as he continued to work that wrapper. "They won't stop until they find us."

  "What are we going to do?"

  There was silence between us for a long moment. He worked that wrapper so hard that it tore in the center. He picked it up and rolled it into a ball between his finger and thumb.

  "I think our only option is to go to Gray Wolf."

  "But I thought you were convinced the leak was theirs."

  "It is. But everyone is pulling the wagons into a circle: the FBI, the Casper Police Department, the... everyone. Gray Wolf is
on the outside, but they also have the most to lose right now."

  "Because of Ash?"

  He looked hard at me. "How do you know about Ash?"

  "I talked to Kirkland."

  "When?"

  I shook my head. "This morning..."

  "When, exactly?" He reached over and took hold of my wrist, tugging my arm toward him. "It's important."

  "When we stopped at that gas station. There was a burner phone in the back, in the place where the jack is kept."

  He let me go, sitting back so heavily that he made the bench bounce a little. He stared out the window, his hand on his forehead like a man who'd just had a eureka moment.

  "They could have been tracking the cellphone."

  "What?"

  "The assassin. He could have been tracking the cellphone."

  "That makes more sense than the idea that Kirkland or Sutherland would give that information away."

  He nodded, seeming to bristle a little when I spoke those names. I studied his face, trying to put everything that happened today into some sort of prospective. He wasn't who he said he was, but whatever lies he was carrying around, they were coming back to bite him in the ass. And he knew it.

  "You work for the government."

  He focused on me for a long second. "Yeah," he said, no longer denying it.

  "What agency?"

  He shook his head, glancing at the waitress as she came toward us with our food.

  I watched the woman set the plates down, making a fuss over him, asking him if he wanted nearly every condiment man had ever thought of. She finally left, glancing behind her to smile at Clint one more time. It was annoying.

  "This is too public."

  His eyes were bright when they fell on my face again. "You need to eat. Then I want you to call Gray Wolf, tell them we're coming. Find out what they've done to find Grayson. Don't mention my people, don't mention that we're on the run. Just tell them we're coming and we're going to need a private meeting with Kirkland and..." He hesitated, hiding it behind the act of taking a bite of one of his French fries.

  "Sutherland?"