by Jaime Rush
Birds called to one another in the trees, and in the distance, he heard an engine. Kade couldn’t put off reading the text he’d heard come in earlier, assuming it was from Ferro. Kade had to buy time with some valid excuse. But it wasn’t a text from his boss; it was from Mia: CALL ME ASAP!
She never bothered him when she knew he was on a mission. Kade walked beyond the trees that bordered the house and called her.
She answered with, “Thank the gods. Kade, are you all right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Good, because I’m going to kill you. Ferro called me into his office this morning. I was freaking that something had happened to you, because why would he want to talk to me?”
Uh-oh. “What did he want?” And please get to the point.
“First it was about Dad. Tell me, Kade, did he get involved with some woman in the prison and die trying to break her out?”
Hell. “He told you that?” He smacked the trunk of a pine tree.
“Yes, and I wanted to tell him he was full of shit, but he’s a superior officer, so I had to sit there and stuff my shock and disgust. Which you know is very hard for me. So now I’m asking you: who’s the one full of shit?”
Damn, it wasn’t Ferro’s place to tell her that. “I fudged the truth.”
“Fudged!” She took a deep breath, and he knew her pain because he’d felt it, too.
“You were seven at the time and didn’t need to know all that. Later…I wanted you to consider him someone to look up to.”
“That’s why Mom killed herself, isn’t it? The scandal? The betrayal.”
“I’ve always thought so. But I don’t know the whole story about our father. We can’t be sure that he was romantically involved with this woman. I’m beginning to wonder—”
“And now you! That’s why Ferro told me, because he thinks you’re doing the same thing with this Violet. Are you in love with her?”
A flash of his hands on her body, the taste of her…
“You are!” Mia hissed. “Otherwise you would have denied it immediately.”
“I’m not in love with her,” he whispered, though the images, and the way they made him feel, mocked his words. He couldn’t have Mia believing he was. “How could I be? I didn’t really know her until this assignment.”
“And your assignment was to kill her.”
“Yeah.”
“But you know her now? You took time to get to know her when you were supposed to just go in and terminate her?”
Cripes, his little sister was questioning him. He couldn’t say how he’d come up on Violet crying, how her vulnerability had touched him in a way he couldn’t explain. How her strength, smile, and sass touched him, too.
Mia went on. “You’re the one who told me to do what I’m told, that the Guard has a reason for everything.”
“That’s what I thought. But nothing about this assignment makes sense. A good friend and former Vega recently told me to trust my gut when something didn’t feel right. That’s what I’m doing. You should, too.”
“By going against the Guard and losing everything you’ve worked for? What are you thinking?”
“That’s just it, Mia. I’m thinking that this assignment isn’t right.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why does Ferro suspect I’m involved with Violet?”
“He didn’t say. He told me to talk sense into you before he sent someone else to…remedy the situation. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like the sound of it.”
Kade kicked the dirt. Why had Ferro dragged Mia into this? Because…Ferro must know the Carnelian Dragon. It all fit together, the way the pieces of teak he’d installed on his old boat had. The Carnelian had reported to Ferro that Kade was fighting beside Violet. And now he was going to send someone else out. Kade didn’t like the sound of that either.
“Mia, I’m not going rogue because I’ve lost my head over a woman. Tell Ferro I’m deep undercover, unraveling a bigger conspiracy. Buy me time but stay out of this. Tell him I’m making perfect sense.”
“Why can’t you tell him?”
“Because if I talk to that son of a bitch right now, I’ll spew.” He broke off a branch, crushing it and getting sap on his hand. The pungent scent of pine filled his nose. “Did he tell you anything specific about the woman our father tried to release?”
“No, just the overall story. Why?”
“I never heard the details either. They were confidential. You don’t remember much about our father, but he lived for the Guard and then the Concilium. He also trusted his instincts and taught me to do so as well. Even if he caught hell for it. After he died, I shoved his advice into a deep well inside me. I lost respect for everything he was and said. Now I’m wondering, what if his saving that woman was part of something else? What if she was telling the truth?” There had been evidence pointing to multiple kidnappings, all involving children. His father had worked the case. What if it had been one of the Concilium members his father had trusted?
“Now you’re sounding paranoid.”
“Maybe. But right now I’ve got to take care of Violet.” Take care of her. His chest ached at the thought of keeping her safe, in his arms, in his bed.
“Kade, are you sure about this?”
He could hear the strain in her voice, strain he’d caused. “I’m sure, Mia. I’m sorry you got dragged in.” Not only was his own career crumbling around him, but hers might be, too. She would be associated with the Vega who went rogue. He knew the taint of that.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood in the same moment he heard a whisper of sound nearby. “I have to go.” He turned to find two murderous-looking men coming toward him: Violet’s brothers.
Violet heard the front door close and more than one set of footsteps clomping down her hallway. Her eyes flew open, and she lurched upright. Kade was gone.
Jessup’s voice shouted, “Vee! Get out here.”
She scrambled out of bed, her mind searching for reasons they could be summoning her like this. “Hold on a damned minute.” She threw on clothing and pulled open the door.
Where was Kade? Not in the bathroom.
Jessup’s expression was grim. Behind him, Ryan didn’t look any happier. And both looked as though they’d just been in a scuffle, hair mussed, Jessup’s face bruised.
“What happened?” Her heart lodged in her throat like a clump of mud.
“No, nobody’s dead. Yet.” Jessup’s mouth tightened. He was pissed. “I overheard your boyfriend out there on the phone talking to a woman.”
She had to backtrack her harrowing thoughts. This was about Kade being a cheater? “Yeah, so what? I told you I wasn’t serious about him.” Still, her heart tightened even more.
“He’s not serious about you either. He told the woman he wasn’t in love with you, and how could he be when he didn’t know you until this assignment? Want to know what that assignment is?” He waited a beat. “Killing you.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“He said he’s undercover. What he’s doing is pretending to be in love with you so he can strike when you’re not expecting it. You think there’s a conspiracy, that someone’s targeting the Fringers. Well, guess what? Your boyfriend is targeting you.” He jabbed his finger within an inch of her nose. “You can say all you want, but you’ve got a thing for him. Your bad judgment where men is concerned brought an enemy right into our camp.”
“Wait.” She shook her head, unable to even fathom what Jessup was insinuating. “What exactly did you overhear?”
“Someone named Mia was all pissed.”
“Mia is his sister.”
“Well, that makes sense. She was all over him about not telling her the truth. Because the guy lies.” He nodded to punctuate that.
Kade wasn’t in love with her. Why those words hit her hardest, she didn’t know. And of course, they’d only recently gotten to know one another, so it wasn’t love. But it felt like…in love.
“You’re sure he said h
e was supposed to kill me?”
“The woman said his assignment was to kill you, kind of a question. Even with my Dragon hearing, I couldn’t tell the context. But he said yes.”
She processed that. It explained why Kade had come here, why he’d sneaked up on her instead of calling like any normal person would. If she hadn’t sensed him, she’d be dead. But she had, so he’d had to concoct a story. Her blood felt as though it were thickening by the second, slowing her heartbeat. Seducing her must have come easy for him. She tangled her fingers in the fabric of her shirt. Even worse, she’d been the one to invite him—no, order him—to her bedroom. She’d responded to his touch, his magick, so easily.
I’m a bad, bad man, Vee.
She turned her focus from the ache in her chest to her brothers. “What were you doing out there anyway?”
Jessup tapped his chest. “I’m keeping an eye on things, a good idea right now. I never trusted that guy. I heard the part of the conversation about his assignment and went to get Ryan. Your boy was telling her he was going to ‘take care of you’ when I came back. Take care…as in kill you. What I don’t understand is why the hell would the Guard want you dead?”
“I went to them.” The words dropped out like stones.
Both her brothers stared as though she’d grown a second nose. Finally Jessup spoke. “I know I didn’t hear you say you went to the Guard.”
“I was desperate. I went to report Arlo’s murder. I wanted them to look into it, hoping their investigation would prevent any more bloodshed.” She told them about Ferro’s map and the pins. “They know what’s going on, yet Kade’s boss dismissed me. Soon after, Kade showed up here.” To kill her. “He gave me some story about coming on his own to investigate because it didn’t feel right. And I believed him. He went back to Headquarters to get more information, but his boss blew him off, too.”
Jessup sneered. “That’s what he told you.”
She pushed on, filling them in on everything that happened. “Kade and I fought her together. She would have killed him, and Kade would have killed her, too, if either had the chance. That was real.” But what about everything else?
“And you don’t think we would have helped you?” Jessup said, a growl in his voice.
“You’d help all right, going off and killing the wrong people and starting another war. Kade is levelheaded, not emotionally involved with the clans. He could find out things on the Guard end, so I accepted his help. If he were planning to take me out, he’s had plenty of opportunities.” She held on to that truth. How many times had they been alone, including earlier that morning?
Jessup shook his head. “Who knows what he’s up to?”
“Except the barn wall,” Ryan said with a laugh.
Jessup gave her one of his satisfied smirks. “I grabbed the cuff off the barn wall. He wasn’t easy to take down, least ’til I got the cuff on him.” He gave Ryan a nod. “Let’s go take care of him.”
The two turned to the front door. She ran after them, knowing what that meant. But was it the same way Kade had meant it? “I’m coming, too. Let me talk to him.”
“No way, little sis. He’ll give you some story, and you’ll be all, ‘Oh, please, don’t kill him.’”
She grabbed Jessup’s arm, halting him. “I brought him into this, and I’ll deal with him. I’m not going to be swayed by anything but the truth.” If she could tell the difference.
They both gave her a skeptical look, and a grunt that meant they weren’t agreeing but they weren’t disagreeing. For now.
“Have you talked to him yet?” she asked as they continued through the woods.
“No, he was out cold. Dragon foot connecting with human head equals a KO. It always amazes me how heavy dead weight is.”
“But…he’s alive?”
Again, why should she care, when he’d come here to kill her? I only want answers.
“At the moment.”
This time Kade wasn’t stripped down. He wore jeans and a blindfold. He turned to them as they approached.
“What, you decided to spare him the underwear humiliation?” she asked Jessup.
“Didn’t have any on.” He gave her a derisive look. “Do I want to know what happened to ’em?”
Kade said, “Look, we don’t have time to discuss my underwear. We—”
“You sure damned don’t,” Jessup said.
Violet slapped his arm and mouthed, I’m handling this.
She stepped up onto the stool so she was face-to-face with him. “Kade, I told them the truth about how we met.” She lifted his blindfold, looking into his green eyes, thinking of how he’d shared his ambitions and how he’d sold his soul for the Guard. Was he that good an actor? “Now it’s time for you to tell me the truth about why you came here.”
A red mark marred the side of his face. He released a breath of surrender. “After you left Headquarters, Ferro ordered me to take you out.”
“To kill me?” Her voice quivered.
“Yes.”
“That’s why you came here. To carry out that order. Then I caught you, and you had to come up with a story. Is that what everything you’ve said has been about? Maneuvering me into being…comfortable with you.” She wouldn’t say in love. Not here, not ever.
“No.” He held her gaze, dark mist swirling in his eyes, then shifted his gaze beyond her. “Didn’t you hear the part about the assignment not feeling right from the beginning? That I was going with my gut?”
Jessup crossed his arms over his chest. “Nope.”
“Convenient,” Kade muttered. To her he said, “I questioned the order, even though we’re not supposed to. I was told that you were connected to the murders.”
She nearly choked at that. “Me? Behind the murders?”
“Now that I know you, it’s preposterous. Until yesterday, I only knew you as a Fringe hellcat. So I came here to complete my assignment. You were sobbing, and my gut screamed that you weren’t responsible. I’ve never hesitated on a mission, never second-guessed my superior. So I stood there like an idiot, and you reared up and kicked my ass.”
She glanced back at her brothers, who were listening to every word. About the sobbing. But at least about the kicking ass part, too. She turned to Kade again. “You’re as dedicated a Vega as they come. So I’m supposed to believe that the sight of me crying made you disobey a command?”
“No, that made me see you as more than a crazy-assed Fringer. You were human…and vulnerable. The only thing I lied about was why I’d come in the first place. The more we talked, the more things sounded wrong about this whole situation, which corroborated my instinct. I’ve been putting off my boss with excuses while trying to figure this out. Now Ferro’s dragged my sister into it.”
“You never told her about your father?”
Kade shook his head. “I tried to protect her from that whole mess. Ferro is insinuating to Mia that I’m losing my head over a woman the same way he did.”
“But you’re not.” Thank gods it hadn’t come out as a question.
“Vee—”
“Violet. You don’t get to call me Vee.”
He released another breath. “Violet, I’ve never lost my head over a woman. But you…you—”
“All right, that’s enough,” Jessup said, yanking her off the stepstool.
She pulled her arm away from him. “Let him finish.”
“What, so he can tell you how special you are, beautiful, or whatever other line he’s got in his arsenal? I can already see the flames flickering in your eyes. The man was going to execute you.”
“I do not have flickers in my eyes over him.” She blinked just in case.
Kade said, “Vee—Violet, you can hate me all you want, but right now we’re in big trouble. The Carnelian must have reported to Ferro that we were fighting together. Mia is going to have to tell Ferro that I still haven’t completed my mission. Ferro is going to send someone else to, as Mia quoted him, ‘remedy the situation.’ That means finishing y
ou. I don’t know how high this goes, so I can’t risk going over his head. What I can do is make sure you’re safe.”
Jessup asked, “Is that what ‘taking care of her’ was supposed to mean?”
Kade seemed to run his conversation through his mind. “Yeah, exactly.”
Jessup stepped in front of Violet. “We’ll take care of her. After all, sounds like we’ll be protecting her from a trained killer like you. If someone’s coming for her, we’ll take him out at first sight. Or her, if they send your sister.”
Fear tightened Kade’s face. “If she comes here, it’ll be to try to talk sense into me. She’s not a killer. Don’t hurt her.”
She could tell Kade was not a man used to asking for mercy. He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. His voice was low when he said, “When my replacement comes, his assignment will be to kill me, too. Ferro can’t afford to have me investigating and questioning him. If you leave me here like this, I’ll die.” He looked at all of them. “I can help keep Violet safe.” He met her gaze. “You figured out there was something going on, and you unfortunately brought your suspicions right to the man behind it.”
“Why would some Guard dude want to start a war in the Fringe?” Ryan asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Kade said. “It’s a lot easier for me to believe that Violet is some crazed psycho bitch than to suspect my superior is setting up a war. It goes against everything I believe in, everything I’ve worked most of my life for.” She saw the truth in that, at least. Unless he was a consummate actor, this was tearing him apart.
Vegas are trained to be spies and go undercover. Everything he’s told you could be part of a plan. And if you believe him, you could not only put yourself at risk but also everyone you love.
She turned away, doubt tearing at her. There was the Kade who’d shared his ache at not believing in his father. Who had made sexy and tender love to her. Then there was the Vega Kade. Her brothers were right, damn it. She couldn’t trust her judgment where Kade was concerned.
