Lord of the Wolfyn and Twin Targets

by Andersen, Jessica

  She might’ve told herself she was giving in to save him or some such nonsense, but in the end it came down to not trusting him enough to do his job, not trusting him to keep the two of them alive.

  Damn her, he thought, raw hurt expanding in his chest. Why hadn’t she just woken him up?

  He saw Drew glance back, and though he couldn’t hear the other man’s words over the crashing surf and the laboring whine of the boat’s engines, he read his lips as he said to Michael, “Sharpe’s looking cool. We’ll be okay.”

  I’m not cool, he wanted to say, I’m numb.

  But because he knew his team needed him to be strong, he unstrapped himself from his chair and took up position directly behind Michael and Drew, hanging on to the back of the two captain’s chairs and riding the heaving deck on braced legs. “Looking good,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

  The small gravel strip was no more than fifty feet away, but there was a vicious whip of crosscurrent in the gap, and the intersection of the riptide with the crosscurrent created an area of man-high chop. The cliffs bounced the sea breeze around, creating nearly gale-force winds in that small area, even though the day beyond was bright and sunny.

  The comm device inside John’s raincoat crackled with Dick Renfrew’s voice reporting that they were pulling back to wait for further instructions, and god-speed to the island team.

  It was time to do or die.

  “Hang on!” Michael yelled, the wind whipping the words away the moment they were out of his mouth. “We’re going in!”

  He kicked the engines full-throttle, aiming upstream of the current in the hopes that by the time they were through, they’d be on dry land.

  Or splintered against the rocks. One or the other.

  John hooked his feet beneath the ankle rests of each pilot’s chair and tightened his grip as the boat surged forward with a howl, leaped up the side of a wave and hung there, poised motionless for a moment, before crashing into the trough and burying its nose in the sea.

  At a moment when he should’ve been on an adrenaline high, should’ve been bracing for a crash, or prepping for the fight to come, he was wishing he were somewhere else. Wishing he were someone else.

  Suddenly, he was beyond weary of the job.

  Why bother? There was always another criminal looking to wreak havoc. Every time he and his team took one down, another sprang up to fill the vacuum created. What would really happen if they all simply quit one day? Would the terrorist community eventually reach some sort of equilibrium?

  You’re losing it, John told himself. Get your head back in the game.

  He needed a vacation, he thought incongruously, hanging on to the seats as a ten-foot whitecap hit them broadside, nearly turtling the twenty-foot craft. Michael and Drew fought the controls, forcing the boat to churn through the white spume. Jimmy had gone from green to gray and looked like he was praying.

  Meanwhile, John was realizing there was really no place he wanted to go. For that matter, what would he do if he up and left the Bureau? Sure, it might be fun to tinker with the house for a few months, but then what? He didn’t have anything else. Didn’t have anything but the job.

  And damn Sydney again for bringing that painfully home inside him.

  Even as he despaired in his soul, his brain stayed cool, scanning the scene and calculating options. He saw the gap and pointed. “There!”

  Michael nodded and aimed the floundering boat through the patch of incongruously glass-smooth water. Like a biker skimming across hardpan after laboring through beach sand, the boat shot forward, gaining momentum enough to slew through the last section of water and fling itself up the beach with a sideways, jolting slide.

  “Let’s go!” Drew took a flying leap off the boat and grabbed the towline off the front. Jimmy wasn’t far behind him, moving fast on shaky legs. The two quickly started looking for a stone outcropping to tie off to, or failing that, a crevice they could set an eye-bolt into.

  Michael stayed on board, manning the controls in case a larger wave slapped onto the beach and threatened to float the craft off. He called, “Get the line as high as you can, so the boat can move with the tide if necessary.”

  Don’t bother, John almost said. We won’t need it past tide change.

  The way he saw it, by that time either they would’ve already captured the island or they’d be dead. He didn’t see a viable option that involved retreat.

  But he also knew that wasn’t the Iceman speaking, it was someone else entirely, someone who ran on emotion rather than logic. Someone whose heart hurt in his chest. Someone who would do them no good on the mission ahead.

  Focus, he told himself. Forget the woman. Find the game.

  “We’re good,” Jimmy called, and tossed down the line. Once the boat was tied fast, John distributed their packs, which were loaded with the weapons and other gear they’d projected needing for the op.

  By the time he’d jumped down off the boat and shouldered his own pack, he’d more or less found the calm that’d served him so well throughout his life. The moment his boots hit the gravel, signaling that it was time to roll, the questions and regrets that’d plagued him on the boat ceased to exist, or if they existed, they’d been shoved so far down into his psyche that they wouldn’t interfere.

  He was in the zone. Game on.

  After reporting their position to the other boat in a brief burst of radio traffic—they were using a scrambled channel but still keeping the chatter to a minimum—John led his men toward the likeliest-seeming trail up the cliff face.

  “There’s more of an angle than I expected,” he said, as much to himself as to the others. “We may not even need the ropes.”

  “First good news we’ve had all day,” Drew muttered, and John couldn’t disagree.

  Still, it took them a few minutes to work their way up to the top of the cliff, testing their way and setting ropes as necessary. When they reached the edge, John used an angled mirror on a telescoping handle—an old technology, but smaller and lighter than the newer fiber-optic units, and fine for basic sneak-a-peek stuff—to check out what was going on above them.

  “All clear,” he mouthed to Drew, who was directly behind him, followed by Jimmy, with Michael taking the rear point position.

  John slipped up and over the rocky lip, onto a flat promontory that was nothing but windswept rock for the first fifteen feet or so before giving way to a tangle of salt-stunted evergreens and low island scrub.

  Seeing no signs of resistance, he beckoned the others up and over. As planned, they set eyehooks and climbing ropes near the edge, in case they needed a quick exit. Once that was done, they slipped into the forest of stunted evergreens, walking single file and keeping a sharp watch for hostile company.

  Jimmy tracked their course and progress on a hand-held GPS unit. They were still a half mile away from the main compound when John heard a noise coming from up ahead.

  Senses alert, he stopped and gestured for the others to fade into the surrounding trees.

  He strained to pinpoint the noise. He’d thought…there! He pointed off to the east, where a thicker stand of taller trees shaded the landscape. Michael nodded. He’d heard the footsteps, too. Moving silently, the marksman readied his weapon, knowing they couldn’t let an alarm get back to the main compound.

  Not yet, anyway.

  The sounds grew louder as the guard approached, making straight for Michael’s position and moving fast.

  John’s heart rate increased at the thought that they’d already been discovered, but he didn’t move or make a sound to indicate the suspicion, instead tensing as the noises angled away, then looped around suddenly, headed straight for his position.

  Without time to pull his own weapon, and afraid that the screening trees nearby would foul Michael’s shot, John didn’t stop to think.

  He acted.

  Lunging out of his scrubby concealment, he caught the guard in a flying tackle, clapping a hand across the bastard’s mouth and s
lamming him to the ground.

  Working on icy logic and instinct rather than the mores of civilization, he had his combat knife out and was a heartbeat away from the guard’s throat when he realized two things that had him pausing the final blow.

  One, the guy wasn’t big enough to be one of Tiberius’s guards, and two, the guy wasn’t a guy.

  It was Sydney.

  The realization flared through his gut in a burst of heat and anger that came straight from the place he’d locked away for the duration of the op. He spat a curse and rolled aside, rising to his feet before he turned back and looked down at her.

  She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the day—and night—before, and she had a faint bruise along her jaw. Her face and arms were scratched and bleeding, and she was breathing hard, as though she’d run all the way from the mansion. Her eyes were worried and scared and faintly defiant, as though she already knew what he was going to say, and didn’t plan to back down.

  Her eyes locked on his. “He said he was going to kill you if I didn’t go with his people,” she said, her voice low and rasping with the effort of her breaths. “At the hotel. There was a sniper outside the window. I saw the laser dot on your forehead.”

  “Don’t expect me to thank you for saving my ass,” John said coolly. “You should’ve woken me and let me do my damn job.” He paused. “Did you give him the password?”

  She met him stare for stare. “No, but there’s something more. He’s wired the island to blow. You’ve got maybe twenty-five minutes or so left on the countdown.”

  John’s gut iced. “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  “And then he just, what? Let you go?” He scoffed in disbelief.

  “I went out the window.” Her voice went low. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  Yeah, he thought, but sometimes the truth isn’t enough. Sometimes there’s got to be trust, too.

  And that was something they apparently didn’t have.

  Unable to respond to her, unable to figure out how, he turned away from her, gesturing for the others to get her up. “She comes with us.”

  He heard her quiet sob as he walked away, but he didn’t turn back. He’d already given her one too many chances.

  Whether or not she was working for Tiberius, caring for her was a liability he couldn’t afford right now. He had a job to do.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SILENT TEARS STUNG Sydney’s eyes as she stumbled along in John’s wake. She couldn’t stop looking at him, at the tense set of his shoulders and the uncompromising line of his square jaw, couldn’t stop remembering the night before, when she’d run her hands over those same broad shoulders and tasted the skin along that square jaw.

  Though she hadn’t gone to bed with him expecting a future, she’d hoped for more than the night. Then Tiberius had called. Damn him. And damn John for not trusting her enough to hear her out, for not caring enough to try to see her side of things.

  The rising burn of anger dried her tears. Her legs ached from her flight from the mansion and trembled with the knowledge that she was headed back there yet again. She knew John would keep her as safe as possible—he had a core of honor, whether he trusted her or not—but she couldn’t shake the terrible knowledge that none of this was going as planned.

  Or rather, none of it was going according to their plan. She suspected they were playing right into Tiberius’s hands, because now if he captured the team, he’d not only get another chance to strip the password from her, he’d also have the opportunity to rid himself of a major foe in Sharpe and his team.

  Or he’d just take off and hope they blew up with the island, because it sure didn’t seem like John had believed her on that front, either.

  Run! she wanted to say. Let’s go, let’s get out of here. But she didn’t, because he wasn’t listening to her.

  She could only trudge along behind him, wishing she’d done things differently, wishing that she’d never taken Tiberius’s damn job in the first place, or that the messages she’d managed to sneak off the island had been to the authorities rather than to Celeste.

  But wishing for something was never enough to make it happen. If that were the case, her parents would’ve returned when they were children, Celeste would be healed and John would’ve known instinctively how to trust her.

  Unfortunately, it seemed like all the wishes in the world wouldn’t be enough to make that happen.

  “We’re almost there,” Jimmy whispered from behind her, his voice almost soundless.

  John heard him, though, and brought the team to a halt. Michael covered Sydney—his expression apologetic—while the others had a quick confab. After a minute, John gestured to the sharpshooter. “You two stay here. We’re going to split up, find someplace to stash her and do a quick recon. When I get back, you can—”

  A crack of gunfire cut him off, the bullet splintering the tree to his immediate left.

  In the next moment, all hell broke loose.

  The teammates dove for cover while Sydney stared, slow to react from the shock of it all, the strangeness of what her life had come to.

  “Get her down!” someone shouted, but the voice seemed to come from far away, muted beneath the chatter of gunfire.

  “Damn it, Sydney, get down!” John hit her with a flying tackle, grabbing her by the waist and dragging them both to the ground.

  Instead of landing flat atop her, he twisted them in midair so they landed on their sides facing each other, with his arms looped around her waist and their noses nearly touching. The hard metal of his gun pressed into her, but she barely noticed the discomfort. She was caught in his eyes, which blazed with fury and maybe something else. Something hotter and less certain, something that made her think that maybe he’d heard her, after all. Maybe a small part of him believed her.

  He didn’t speak, though. Instead, he scrambled to a low crouch and joined his teammates in returning fire.

  But the counterattack was too little, too late. Sharpe’s team was surrounded and outgunned. Within minutes, Tiberius’s guards had overrun their position. They quickly disarmed the team members, stripped their gear away and secured them with zip ties.

  They did Sharpe first, and they weren’t gentle. Tears tracked down Sydney’s cheeks as he stared at her.

  She couldn’t read his expression, but guilt had her blurting, “I didn’t lead them to you. I didn’t tell them anything.”

  He didn’t get a chance to answer—even if he’d been planning to—because the guards who’d tied him yanked him to his feet and prodded him with his rifle butt. “Shut up and move.”

  As the guards herded them to the main house, John and Sydney wound up walking near each other. He bent low so he could whisper in her ear, “I believe you, about that at least. I just wish you’d trusted me enough to let me take care of Tiberius. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Tears stung Sydney’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Keep moving.” The guards shoved her ahead of the others, and then when they reached the house, hustled her down the hallway to the right, away from the others. Ignoring her struggles and panicked shouts, they pushed her through the door to her old quarters and locked her in.

  “John,” she shouted. “John!” She didn’t see where they’d taken the others, but feared she could guess.

  Upstairs. To the security hub.

  HE HEARD HER CALL HIS name, heard her voice break on the scream, and nearly tore into the guards in an effort to get to her, but he forced aside the emotions in favor of logic. Barely.

  It wouldn’t help if he got himself shot in the process of getting to her. He had to bide his time. Work with his team. Think it through.

  The emotion had to exist alongside logic.

  Somewhere along the line he’d started to realize that the things he was feeling for her didn’t have to weaken him. Far from it. Caring for her made him stronger, made him want to tear into his foe to get to her, to protect her. He needed to temper
the urge with rationality, though, or he’d start making mistakes.

  The guards split the team up, with three armed men marching Michael, Jimmy and Drew in one direction, while two others prodded John through a doorway.

  They locked the door behind him, and the clank of metal on metal sounded very loud. Very final.

  He found himself in the security hub, a large room with one wall completely given over to a flat screen, on which a shifting array of televised images showed most of the island. A bank of desks faced the displays and held computer stations manned by more of the stone-faced guards.

  The agent inside John, the one that had ruled his thoughts and actions for so many years, automatically cataloged the men and armaments in the room—six men, two with obvious weapons—and mapped out his options for escape…slim to none.

  He was in the middle of cobbling together a desperate plan of attack when Tiberius stepped in through a door in the far wall, and the game changed.

  Wearing a mustard-colored tweed jacket and darker corduroy pants, the self-proclaimed “opportunistic businessman” looked even more like a college professor than he did in his file photos. Unlike so many of the criminals John had sought—and brought to justice—over the years, his eyes weren’t dead or cold, or even angry. Instead, he carried a faintly amused, faintly downtrodden air that made him seem completely unremarkable.

  That was one of the things that made him so incredibly dangerous, John knew. He appeared so trustworthy and nonthreatening on the surface. It was only when the layers started to peel back that the real evil became apparent, and by then, it was usually too late for the innocent victim to escape.

  And despite the gray areas she’d strayed into, Sydney was one of them. An innocent. The blood of the dead wasn’t on her hands, John finally acknowledged to himself when he’d put the guilt on her for far too long.

  The dead belonged entirely to Tiberius and his peculiar brand of mad genius.

  Tiberius stayed halfway across the room, keeping the guards between John and himself, and gave the agent a good, long look. “I don’t have time to waste with power plays and negotiations, Agent Sharpe, so here’s the deal. You get your girlfriend to turn over the password, and you two and the rest of your team are free to get back in your not-so-stealthy boat and head back to the mainland ahead of the blast that I’m sure dear Sydney told you about.”