DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “I should have known what she was doing and stopped her from fixing the file. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that make me a good guy or a bad guy?”

  Knox held her hands up in a questioning gesture. “I don’t know. No one does. Soon after Olsen was arrested you retired, claiming your sister was having problems with her husband and that you needed to be available to help her.”

  “And for five years I lived a quiet life in Denver, Colorado. And then eighteen months ago, someone or something caused me to simply walk away from my life. Something involving Rebecca Hamilton.”

  Knox glanced at Porter as he joined her in the booth. He clenched his hands and studied me above them.

  “Your sister’s husband had leukemia. You left the CIA to help her both financially and emotionally through the ordeal.”

  “Was the CIA investigating me? Did they think that I helped Olsen out in some way?”

  “They were—they are—investigating you. But they haven’t found any evidence.”

  I nodded. “And Rebecca? Were they investigating her?”

  “You were lead on the team. If they couldn’t find anything on you, they surely couldn’t find anything on her.”

  “Then why would she threaten me? Why would she try to kill me? Who was she working for?”

  “That’s kind of what we’re hoping you can remember,” Knox informed me.

  “Why?”

  Knox and Porter exchanged a look. It seemed like Porter had been chosen to give me the bad news.

  “It seems that someone was trying to break Olsen out of prison. Eighteen months ago, he was moved from a secret detainment facility in Hawaii to one in Rhode Island. During the time he was in Rhode Island, someone moved money from his secret accounts, accounts the CIA had yet to find, to a new account in the Cayman Islands.

  And then someone broke into computer systems all over the country, screwed with prison records, played with financial records, broke into the CIA mainframe, and changed a few, small things in Olsen’s file. Agents think now that it was all a distraction, that someone was playing games with them, trying to keep them off track. And then the night of your accident—”

  “Two planes were rerouted through a computer system at a small airport outside of Austin.”

  “What two planes?” I asked, recalling that Rhett had mentioned that I was involved in that.

  Porter snorted. “I’m sure you could guess.”

  “One carrying Olsen?”

  “Yes,” Knox informed me. “They were transferring him once again. You rerouted his plane with a commuter plane carrying four executives from Kraft. Those executives were quite shocked to find themselves outside a prison in Montana when they were supposed to disembark onto the lovely sands of Key West.”

  “Did Olsen escape?”

  Again they exchanged glances. “That’s the funny thing,” Porter said. “Whoever rerouted the plans didn’t just switch their flight plans. He changed the second flight plan completely, sending Olsen’s plane not to Key West, but back to Hawaii. The prison was more than accommodating, agreeing to keep him while they figured out how the hell he got there.”

  It would have been funny if it wasn’t so fucking scary. A criminal could that easily be sent to the wrong place. Obviously I’d done it. That was the point of whoever had forced me into their little game with Rebecca. And it explained why they wanted me dead, too. Dead men can’t confess to their culpability in a crime. But who switched the second flight plan? Was that me? Did that prove I was a good guy? Or had Rebecca done it? Or someone else?

  I had no way of knowing.

  “It’s a lot,” Knox said, reaching over to touch my arm. “You should take some time to think about it, to process it.”

  I shook my head. “I need to know everything you know about me. Someone tried to kill me a year ago and they know now that I’m alive. I need to know who I’m running from.”

  Knox touched Porter’s arm, a silent conversation going on between them. They were clearly close, these two. The kind of relationship that develops when you live your life going from one dangerous situation to another. A flash of memory rushed through my head, Rebecca lying in the middle of a bed, naked save for the dark bra that broke the simple lines of her back. She was just waking, stretching like a cat against the mattress. She smiled when she looked at me.

  Hello, lover.

  And then the memory was gone.

  “There’s someone here you should meet before we talk anymore,” Porter said. “She’s been hanging out at the office since you were spotted down in Houston. She’s incredibly anxious to see you.”

  He stood and slipped out of the diner. A moment later, a woman in jeans and a soft green sweater came into the diner, her face pale, her eyes anxious. I knew her immediately, not just because she was the woman in the photograph, but because I knew her better than I knew myself. Because she was the better half of my soul.

  Hannah.

  Chapter 18

  Rhett

  I was afraid I’d arrived too late. The gates were enormous and refused to allow me even a peek at the massive house that Gray Wolf used as their offices. I couldn’t even see the cars parked out front to determine if one of them might be a car Xander had stolen. I had no idea if he was here or if he’d gone elsewhere. But this was my best hope.

  I parked on the side of the road in the sedan that belonged to Dragon. I debated over whether or not to get it, to alert Luke to the fact that I was leaving without Xander. But then I realized that Xander was his target and he would continue to assume Xander was in the motel room. Or he’d follow me, but I could lose him fairly easily. And then he’d have to face Hayden’s wrath when he arrived.

  But Luke didn’t follow me. It was as I expected. He was only interested in Xander and too trusting to understand that Xander was no longer in the room.

  I arrived at Gray Wolf a little after noon. I parked behind a grove of trees, hiding the car as best as I could from the cars coming and going from the compound. I was there a little less than an hour when I recognized Ingram Porter driving up in an SUV, a pretty woman in the passenger seat beside him. Not even twenty minutes later, he left again, another woman in the passenger seat and another in the back.

  I knew the woman in the passenger seat. She was in that picture the car rental guy gave Xander.

  She was Xander’s woman.

  My heart broke a little as I put the car in gear and followed them into town. They pulled into a parking lot beside a diner, Porter and the woman in the back going inside first. I watched from a distance as they joined Xander in a booth at the front of the diner, watching as they spoke calmly. Quietly. I wanted to know what they were saying to him. I wanted to know why they knew so much more about him than I did.

  I left my car, a backup pistol in my hand pressed against the side of my leg as I casually crossed the street. It was hard to be casual with a newly sewn wound on the back of my thigh, but I somehow managed not to attract too much attention. The SUV Porter was driving was parked between two trucks, the perfect cover. I slipped up to the driver’s side door and let myself in—glad Porter hadn’t thought to lock the doors—and held the gun just below the dashboard, right where the woman could see it, but low enough that no one else could.

  “Who the hell are you?” she cried out, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “I’m a friend of Xander’s. Who are you?”

  She tilted her head slightly. “If you’re his friend, why do you have a gun?”

  “Because people are trying to hurt him, and I need to know if you’re one of them.”

  She didn’t need to answer my questions. The expression on her face, the grief and fear in her eyes, was more than enough to tell me what I needed to know. She loved him.

  My eyes fell to the wedding rings on her left hand and it was like a million little pins stabbing into my heart.

  “Are you his wife?”

  S
he slowly lowered her hands. “No.”

  “But your rings …?”

  She smiled softly, and it was such a familiar smile that I suddenly understood.

  “I’m his sister.”

  I nodded, relief allowing me to set the gun down and let all the fear that had been following me around since yesterday crawl away just a little.

  “Is he married?”

  “Xander?” She chuckled. “We’ve had that argument a million times. He keeps assuring me that he’s had enough of family and raising kids between raising me and then helping me raise my daughter. I think he just likes being a bachelor, being able to live his life according to his own rules instead of someone else’s.”

  “Then the baby, that’s yours?”

  She nodded. “How do you know about her?”

  “There’s a picture. Someone gave it to him.”

  “He used to carry this picture of me and Sabrina in his wallet. I kind of hoped after he disappeared that someone would see it and somehow manage to put two and two together. That they’d call me and let me know he was okay.”

  There was pain in her voice as she spoke. I touched her arm, wanting to soothe some of her pain.

  “He has amnesia. He’s had it for over a year.”

  She nodded. “They told me. But he’s been missing for eighteen months.”

  “Yeah.” I looked out the window. “I think maybe some of the people he worked with in the CIA came after him. They made threats against Sabrina and made him leave, made him do whatever it was he did while he was gone.”

  Tears began to roll down Hannah’s face. “He left to protect my daughter.”

  “He left to protect you both.”

  She nodded. “That’s why I didn’t go to the police. I was afraid … I thought that it might be the CIA and I didn’t want them to hurt him because I was raising a fuss. That’s why I hired Gray Wolf.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  She smiled softly. “Thank you.”

  I dragged my fingers through my hair, glancing out the side window just as Porter came around the side of the building.

  “He’s coming for you.”

  “Who are you? How do you know my brother?”

  I gestured to Porter with my head. “I’m like him. I’m just trying to help Xander remember who he is.”

  She shook her head. “No. You’re more than that.”

  I watched Porter through the window. “I’d like to be. But I’m not sure it’s what he wants.”

  “Even when he knew who he was, my brother was not one to commit easily. You have to give him time. And space.”

  Porter wrenched open the driver’s side door.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Ms. Dennings?”

  “Following my client, Ms. Porter. Exactly what you were doing just a few days ago.”

  “I got the impression he wasn’t terribly content with your efforts, hence him coming to confront me on his own. I would consider that a pink slip, Ms. Dennings.”

  “I’m not fired until he tells me to my face.”

  Porter looked as if he wanted to argue, but then he just gestured to Hannah. “If you’ll just come with me, Mrs. Jeffries.”

  She touched my hand. “Come with us.”

  Porter again looked as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. But it seemed to take quite an effort for him to bite his tongue.

  I followed a few steps behind as Hannah went into the diner. I paused by the door with Porter, watching as Xander stood and watching her walk toward him. Recognition screamed out from his eyes, his expression, before he held open his arms and pulled her to him, calling her by name. He remembered her. It made me wonder if seeing her would help him remember more.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, pushing her head back so that he could see her face. “Sabrina? Is she okay?”

  “Yes. A foot taller and missing her uncle dreadfully, but she’s fine.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m fine, Xander. You always took good care of me, even when you were gone.”

  The way he looked at her, the love that shown from his eyes, was overwhelming. I wanted him to look at me that way and feared that he never would. That no man ever would. Wasn’t that every woman’s fear? That they weren’t worthy of that kind of love coming from a man?

  But then he was looking at me—and it was there, all that love and affection and pleasure—coming toward me with one arm around his sister and the other outstretched for me.

  “Rhett,” he whispered against the side of my head, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  I just nodded. I understood.

  Hannah was crying and smiling at the same time. Xander was staring down into her face, studying her like he was afraid to look away, afraid she’d be gone if he did. And then he suddenly stepped back, releasing us both.

  “We grew up in a trailer park. Mom … she worked all the time. I didn’t know how to cook, but she couldn’t afford convenience food, so we ate burned—”

  “Rice. You burned the rice every freaking time!”

  They laughed together, his memories clearly coming back. Hannah asked him questions, some he could answer, some he couldn’t. It wasn’t all back, but it was coming.

  What did that mean for me? Was it selfish for me to wonder?

  We were quite the spectacle, all of us standing in the middle of this little diner, laughing and joking and crying and talking, blocking the waitresses from their tables and the customers from their booths. But it never occurred to anyone to ask us to move. As cruel and dark as this world had grown, people still appreciated a feel good story, and this was clearly one of those.

  And then my cellphone rang.

  “Rhett? They’re in my dorm room. They’re saying that you have something they want!”

  “What? Jesse?”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 19

  Hayden

  He couldn’t have been more obvious, sitting at the back of the parking lot in a massive SUV that even the dumbest criminal could probably recognize as a security vehicle. There was a reason why we didn’t use the SUVs for surveillance.

  “What the hell?” I asked, yanking the driver’s side door open, knocking him off balance enough that he leaned toward me before catching himself on the steering wheel.

  “What are you doing here, Hayden?”

  “What are you doing here? Since when do you tell my operatives not to follow my orders? Since when do you go chasing after clients without telling anyone what you suspect?”

  “Since I’m trying to protect my family.”

  “Yeah, well, we went down this road five years ago. It didn’t end well then, and it’s not going to end well now.”

  Luke glared at me, but he didn’t argue.

  “Have you spoken to him yet? Do you know what he knows?”

  Luke shook his head, his eyes moving up to the second floor of the motel. “She’s come and gone, but he hasn’t stuck his head out the door yet.”

  “Do you think he’s even there?”

  “There’s only one way out.”

  “You used to be a CIA agent, Luke. Are you really that rusty?”

  He glanced at me, realization popping into his eyes. He grabbed his handgun and jumped out of the vehicle, marching across the parking lot to the second floor landing and the door behind which he believed Rhett and Xander King to be hiding. He kicked it open, much to the fright of the maid two doors down, and disappeared inside.

  “Fucking bathroom window!”

  I nodded, a little more satisfied than I should have been that I was right and he was wrong. Luke ran back down the stairs, forcing me to run to follow, barely climbing into the SUV before he took off.

  “They must have gone back to Dallas. Or to the hospital.”

  “No. They went to Austin, to the offices of Gray Wolf Security.”

  Luke glanced at me. “Why?”

  “Because Gray Wolf was hired by some unknow
n person to find Xander. They have answers he needs.”

  “That’s if he really has amnesia.”

  “You don’t think he does?”

  “I’m concerned that he used it as an excuse to get close to Megan.”

  “Why would someone come after Megan after all this time?”

  “Because she took down Olsen. There are people who are still pretty pissed about that.”

  I had to agree, but I didn’t think Xander was one of those people. He was in the building. If he wanted to hurt Megan, he would have tried something then.

  “Megan’s safe.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because she is. If someone came after her now, they’d have to go through a hell of a lot of security to get to her. And then they’d have to go through us.”

  Luke glanced at me. “They got close to her once before. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  I shook my head. “Megan is smart. She wouldn’t let anyone close enough to hurt her.”

  “She let Dante close to her. And you couldn’t do anything to stop that.”

  It pissed me off that he was throwing that back in my face. Dante was Luke. He’d had his face surgically altered to get close to her. And I hated him on sight. I didn’t like that she was having an affair with him, didn’t like that she was letting one of her operatives close enough to hurt her. When I learned the truth, I still hated him. Especially when they got married in a secret ceremony before we ever learned the truth about Luke’s role in the whole Olsen affair.

  We still didn’t know completely whose side Luke had been on. Just because he was the one who finally revealed that Olsen had Peter didn’t mean that he wasn’t working with Olsen the whole time.

  Luke killed Colin Watson as he was telling Dominic what he knew about the rogue CIA agent. Luke corrupted Emily Greene’s files so that we couldn’t read the results of her investigation. Luke cut our investigation off at the knees every time we made some sort of headway. He claimed it was to protect Megan, to keep the bad guys from knowing how close she was to finding the answer. But Luke was also the person who delivered Peter to Olsen in the first place. That left us all scratching our heads, wondering where his loyalties lay.