Final Protocol (The Protocol Series Book 3)

by Eden Butler

  “Let’s forget this,” he breathed against my mouth. “You’re lonely and for that, I’m sorry, truly.” Lincoln brushed a finger over my cheek, his expression worried, but shifting to interest. “I’ll be better to you, Lia, my love. I promise.”

  There was no worry for me about how Lincoln would treat me. I didn’t care anymore about anything but being free from him. I didn’t care, at that moment, about anything but seeing Cruz safe. Just then, as my husband held my face between his fingers, a thought came to me—Cruz’s professions about duty and honor. Losing his position would devastate him. It would shred decades of reputation and hard work he’d devoted himself to. For what? One night with me? A fleeting chance to recall what we’d had once? I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Linc,” I said, stopping him when he tried to kiss me again. “This wasn’t...Cruz would never.” I inhaled, irritated with myself that I couldn’t find the right words. Eyes squeezed shut, I exhaled, my voice calmer, my heart no longer thrumming hard. “Please don’t fire him. He’s worked so hard and I wouldn’t...”

  Lincoln leaned back, his hand near the side of my head as he looked over my features. He shook his head once, his frown losing some of his tightness as he watched me. “This wasn’t him?” he asked, nodding when I shook my head. “Okay...ok...” Again, Lincoln wiped his hand over his mouth, thinking, contemplating his next move. “I’m...not mad at...him.”

  “Promise me,” I said, not sure what to make of the look he gave me. That look made me feel like a kid—irresponsible and in trouble for something I shouldn’t have ever done.

  My husband’s frown was gone completely now, and he took to rubbing my cheek again, like he was seeing me, really seeing me for the first time. Either that or he was surprised I had worked up the nerve to get someone else’s attention.

  “I promise. I won’t fire him.” Lincoln brushed the hair from my forehead before he kissed me there. A quick nod and he backed away, readjusting his tie before he made for the doorway. “Of course,” he said, sounding smug. “I can’t have him around you, now can I?”

  “What?” Something caught in my throat just then, clawing at my lungs until fire welled up inside me.

  “Lia, sweetheart, I’m certainly not going to put temptation in your way.” Lincoln’s laugh was quick but cruel. He pushed his hands into his pockets, shrugging. “What kind of man would I be if I didn’t pay extra attention to you and made sure you aren’t tempted again when you’re bored?”

  Boredom. That was Lincoln’s reasoning for me cheating. Not love. Not wanting something I’d had once and always wanted back. My husband clearly thought I stepped out on him because I was acting out, because sheer boredom had made me eager to get out of my monotonous routine.

  “I’m going to have a shower,” he said, already through the doorway. “You’re welcome to join me.” He didn’t wait for my answer. As I stood there, with the throb of Cruz’s kiss lingering on my mouth, I’d spend years waiting—for the end of my marriage, for the end of Lincoln’s presidency, for the end of a love Cruz had given me and my husband had taken away.

  ONE

  Cruz

  Appalachian Mountains, 2018

  THE CABIN WAS TOO QUIET. The realization came to me between the slipstream of silence and peace—neither which I’d ever had too much of. My dreams that night had been of Lia and the curve of her naked body as she rested against me. My hand fit perfectly against the slope of her lower back, my fingers pressed tight as I held her. In that place I couldn’t name, there was only the two of us, existing in a world that invited nothing but the rhythm of our hearts and the fullness of our bodies coming together.

  She was mine and no one could take her from me.

  I’d kill anyone who tried.

  That thought alone jerked me from sleep. I sat up in a riot of movement—arms shooting out, gripping for the empty space around me, legs kicking as though something loud and invisible punched me awake to drive home the point that Lia was gone.

  “Shit...” I muttered, jumping to my feet, attention around the small cabin, to the dimming fire and my Zippo thrown haphazardly onto my discarded jeans across the bottom of the sleeping bed.

  Lia wasn’t in the back, that much I could tell because the make-shift toilet was empty and the curtain separating the closet that held it was pulled back. No one sat there. “Lia?” I said, even though something brutal and mocking in my head told me it was pointless to call out to her.

  My chest felt tight as I moved around the cabin, upturning the pillows, ignoring the whiff of her perfume that came off one when I kicked it aside. The duffle bag near the counter was unzipped and I darted for it, noticing how it held less bulk than it had the night before.

  “Come on...” I said, wondering where her clothes were, wondering why she’d move so quietly, so swiftly to get dressed and away from me. Her jeans were gone, so were her underthings. The thickest sweater and socks I’d packed for her were missing from my folded shirts and light flannels.

  A careful glance around the cabin and I refocused, squinting, focusing on how she’d left the place. What I saw only confirmed my suspicions that she’d left on her own. The missing clothes from the duffle wasn’t the worst of it. The faucet jutting out of the wall was left on in a slow drizzle, like she hadn’t had time to make sure she turned it off completely. There were several dropped protein bars and one of her elastic hair ties near the bag of supplies Johnson had thrown together for us when we’d first made our contingency plans for getting Lia out of D.C. and away from the threat so focused on her. They’d wanted to make me worry. They’d wanted me to understand how much danger she was in.

  I’d counted our groceries before we turned in the night before. Three bottles of water were now missing and the stack of protein bars in the back of the bag were about six light.

  It just didn’t make any sense to me. Lia didn’t get spooked. She’d handled the president’s assassination like a true soldier, scared, but calm. She’d been at my side when we were in college and some asshole carrying a nine millimeter stuck the gun in my face and took all the cash and cards we had on us. Even then, after the guy took off and she locked her legs around me to keep me from chasing after him, Lia still handled the situation with composure.

  So, what in the hell had... My phone was open next to my jeans and the image over the screen was clear.

  “Fuck.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me to lock my phone, something I always did on instinct. But Lia distracted me with her mouth and smile and...other things. Besides, she’d never been a nosey woman. Lia had always trusted me implicitly. No need for me to monitor what she saw or overheard. It had been the nail in my coffin. The floor was cold when I kneeled next to my jeans, pulling them toward me to grab the heavy weight of my phone that was laying near the open fly. She must have thrown it and the Zippo when she read the messages.

  There were four.

  Two unopened that made bile bubble in the back of my throat. There was only one sentence proceeding the images, and they damn sure made things worse.

  Does she know who you really are?

  It always came back to Lia with these assholes. She was the prize they dangled in front of me, keeping me in line, expecting me to do their bidding with no argument. She was always in danger. She’d always be my weak spot.

  I smoothed my thumb across the screen, unable to steady myself the more I saw. My ass hit the floor with a thud and I leaned forward, arms around my knees as I scrolled through images the night of Harris’s assassination.

  In them, I looked guilty. I looked ashamed, holding that gun, staring down at Lia and her husband like I’d just ripped their lives, and the lives of our nation, apart with one bullet through that man’s body.

  But I hadn’t been guilty, not of murder at least and the memory of that night rushed forward, beyond the thick walls I’d constructed in my head to keep them at bay. It wouldn’t work now, not with those damn pictures mocking me, telling me what a fail
ure I’d been.

  Not when I knew Lia was scared of me.

  Her faith in me was gone.

  There was nothing I could have done to keep myself out of the equation that night. Suspicions led to doubt. Doubt to worry. Worry to fear and by the time I’d made it to the rally and snuck behind the stage, up into the rafters where I suspected the shooter would set up, the last bullet had shot through the crowd and landed dead center in the president’s chest.

  I’d been set up. They’d told me where I was expected and then had someone else do the job. I’d been made, marked as a sucker, and I’d been unable to save a damn soul.

  The last messages hadn’t been read and carried a timestamp. Lia hadn’t read them, hadn’t seen the images of me running away, of the fear and worry paling my dark skin. I was glad for it but then I noted the time, relieved that she’d only had about twenty minutes on me. Lia had likely seen the images and made assumptions, probably moving around in a silent panic as I slept, thinking I had a job to do, maybe that I’d brought her here to kill her.

  If that’s what she assumed, she was only half right.

  My jeans were like ice against my skin as I pulled them on, but I ignored every sensation except for the rush of adrenaline that pumped through my body as I dressed. Shirt, socks, flannel, because the temperatures had dropped, then my heavy boots. A glance out of the window made another rush of worry come over me as I imagined Lia, so unaccustomed to the mountainous trek or the hike through the woods, on her own with no real gear or supplies to sustain her.

  It had only been twenty minutes, but Lia was a runner and she probably thought I’d been sent to kill her. She could move. She’d make catching up to her a challenge.

  I pushed down the dred in my gut and threw together some supplies, grabbing the bag I’d packed the night before with ammo. It felt...light. Too light and my stomach coiled and twisted as I clawed it open, sinking to the floor when I found only my knife and two pistols, both missing magazines. All the ammo, all my fucking magazines were just...gone.

  Outside, I caught the squeal of tires, then the sound of several doors closing, and Nelson’s rushed commands to the men that followed him. Fear bubbled in my gut at the realization that I was a sitting duck. I slinked to the back of the cabin and left through the window, tossing the bag to the ground after I pulled free the large knife. I ran from the cabin, not stopping until I came to a thick line of trees and leaned against the largest.

  My fingers shook, and anger curled like boiling water in my stomach, realizing I had nothing but my own common sense and the Fairbairn-Sykes knife my buddy Chris had given me as protection. He’d lifted it from a drunk British Special Air serviceman we’d run military games with in Afghanistan.

  Lia.

  God, what had she done? She left me helpless with Nelson and his goons on my tail. I wanted to curse her, hoped I could find the strength to muster up some small measure of hatred for her, but it was useless.

  Instead, I rested against the tree, inhaling through my nose and let one quick thought of Lia wiggle past the fear and irritation I felt. I kept her warm eyes and beautiful smile at the forefront of my mind before I took hold of the knife, gripping it tight. The footfalls were slow but steady as I stretched my neck, squatting low next to the tree when those steps came closer, watching, waiting, ready to finish the job I’d started the night Harris was murdered.

  TWO

  Lia

  I was New Orleans born and bred. Telling when a storm was approaching was written into my DNA, same as the shade of brown my skin was and the wave running through my natural hair when I kept a flat iron from it. If that innate sensation told me anything, I knew a storm was coming. It was an ache in my bones, the kind that pinches and throbs and I swore I could make out the smell of snow in the sky above me.

  Funny that my first thoughts were of Cruz, the worry that he’d sleep through the morning, tired as I knew he was, and freeze. The fire had been weak and dying when I left.

  When I left.

  God, I was pathetic.

  He killed Lincoln. He shot me and here I was, stomping through the ice-slick forest worried that a murderer was too cold.

  It seemed impossible—all of it. That Cruz had taken Lincoln down? That he’d shot me in the process? My mind pulsed with fractioning thoughts and endless questions that wouldn’t ebb the quicker I moved away from the cabin.

  Why did he kill Lincoln?

  Was it because of me?

  If so, why would he promise me nothing would come between us? Not the past, not anything that wouldn’t...

  “Oh, God.” The wind whipped around me when I stopped walking, feeling a low buzz of disgust begin to sting in the center of my chest.

  “None of it matters,” he’d said. “Not anything else that tries to come between us.”

  Cruz meant...this? The assassination? The truth that I might discover about him murdering my husband?

  I felt sick, desperate, and terrified beyond belief. It would be careless to stop moving. He’d probably woken by now, had seen the missing ammo, had seen that I was gone, and trying to put as much distance between us as possible. He’d come after me. Cruz wasn’t a man that gave up easily. I knew that better than anyone.

  All this time, he hadn’t given me up, not really. He’d played a role. He did his job and aside from those first sweet months we had in Loyola, I wondered if Cruz had spent his time in the White House using me as a mark; seeing how well he could play me until he was close enough, connected enough to take Lincoln out of the equation.

  I closed my eyes, head against the rough bark of a pine tree when I knelt down, my stomach bubbling, my throat constricting with the sting of tears I refused to let loose.

  “You belong to me. I belong to you. There’s no running from that now. Not anymore.”

  He hadn’t meant it. How could he? How did Cruz expect me to belong to someone who’d lied to me, who’d used me, taken advantage of me to get closer to his target?

  There was no way to make the guilt I felt diminish. Behind my closed eyelids, Lincoln’s pale, lifeless face came into view. He’d lay there with Phil and other agents I didn’t know guarding us both. Lincoln had given this country everything he had, and Cruz had repaid him in bullets and blood.

  And what had I done? I’d professed my love to my husband’s killer. I’d let him in and didn’t question that he wanted me safe.

  “You silence the noise.”

  Vomit splattered against the base of the tree when I threw up, my entire body shaking, my skin turning frigid as the bile and sick burned my throat.

  Lincoln’s pale skin, the blood on his chest, the seeping blood on my dress...then me and Cruz, alone in my room. Our bodies slick and glistening with sweat, him taking and taking and me loving every thrust.

  Lincoln Harris hadn’t been a good man, but he had been my husband. Once, the vow I made to him had meant something. It had meant everything.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the movement would drive out the flash of images, the shameful recall of every sin I’d committed.

  It didn’t work.

  The vomit kept coming and with it, my tears. It was all terror and regret, fear and confusion. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel safe enough, if I’d ever be able to get past this. If I’d ever see myself free from Cruz and the damage he’d done to me in this lifetime.

  Too many sins leave you hollow. Too much sorrow makes you empty. I’d had enough of both to last a thousand lifetimes.

  I had to make a choice—walk away, run if need be and never look back, or wallow and worry, wrap my guilt and loneliness around me like a cloak, let it consume me from the inside. That option was no option at all. That wasn’t who I was or had ever been.

  I stood, determined to keep moving away from the cabin, following the trickle of water I heard on the other side of thinning mountain trees. If I kept at that direction, I might luck out and find a road, then a ride away from this place. A handful of steps away from the tre
e, I jerked to a standstill, automatically ducking, hands over my head when three shots rang out into the open sky. They weren’t directed at me, but I ran anyway, angry that my first thoughts turned to worry.

  Please God, not Cruz, I muttered, disgusted with myself, but determined not to get caught by any flying bullets.

  “Don’t move, asshole!” I heard, but that command seemed to be meant for someone I couldn’t see. That wasn’t Cruz’s deep tone screaming to be heard.

  I kept moving, annoyed that the tears began to thread between my lashes, those loud, gruff voices, two now, bellowing outward so that even as I put space between myself and the danger behind me, I could still make out every threat they shouted at each other.

  The world around me had grown increasingly small and my limbs felt heavy, as though something had fallen on top of me and tried desperately to keep me from reaching the water streaming ahead. Maybe that feeling was the realization that I was on my own. Maybe it was me mourning something I knew I’d never get back.

  Maybe it was simply me coming to terms with the awareness that there wasn’t anyone but myself that I could depend on.

  “Back off!”

  “There he is!”

  My body chilled harder, but I didn’t think it was from the wind that picked up or the noise of shouting and rustling leaves I heard in the distance. My worry was thick. It chilled me deeper than the plummeting temperatures.

  The voices grew dimmer, but I could still make them out as I ran, heart thundering now, rattling with the anxious worry that kept me looking over my shoulder, bumping into limbs that slapped against me and abandoned campsites as I moved past them.

  The trees thinned out the closer I came to the water. I thought I could make out the bend of a ridge and hear the upsurge trickle of a stream up ahead. There were more campsites, long forgotten. The only remnants of them lay in the strewn tent material and abandoned flannel shirts and canvas bags I stepped over has I continued to run from the forest.