“Oh, God.” Emily wrapped her arms around Sam. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, this is my fault. I brought you into all of this.” She gulped. “And now you and your brother—”
“I’m going to kill him,” Emily growled and pulled away.
Liam held up a hand and shook his head at her fierce approach. Shoulders slumped, she faced Sam again. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry about me.” Sam stepped over Blane’s strewn clothes, her stomach roiling at the sight, and reached for her friend’s arm. “We’ll make him pay for this.”
Emily softly nodded, still in a daze.
They sat back on the bed and remained there in silence, because, honestly, what was there to say at a moment like this?
“Liam! I need your help!” Asher’s voice rang through the stairwell, and everything inside of her went numb.
Chapter Fifteen
Owen kept his hands wrapped tight around Blane’s throat. The slow tinge of red crept up the man’s face; he could feel the blood in his own body heating.
“You’re going to kill him!” Asher roped his hands around Owen’s arm and yanked on it, but Owen didn’t want to let go.
He lost sight of the man as his own eyes clenched shut, feeling like he was traveling at a high speed and low altitude, and he’d have a G-induced loss of consciousness soon.
He wanted to kill him. He wanted to stamp out the life in him, to make him pay. He should pay for everyone who’d ever died. For Jason. For Brad. Hell, even for his buddy Marcus, whose death had nothing to do with the case.
Scum like Blane didn’t deserve to breathe when good men had been taken from the world.
“Owen, you have to stop,” Asher yelled.
He heard Liam’s voice in the distance, too, but he couldn’t make out his words.
Anger boiled deep inside, and blood rushed to his ears.
But at the sound of Sam’s voice, his hold loosened. He finally shot his hands into the air in surrender and stumbled back.
Asher sidestepped him to check Blane’s pulse.
“Owen.” A hand wrapped over his shoulder.
He flinched and slowly pivoted to face Sam. Her eyes were wide, and she was probably scared shitless, even if she didn’t show it.
He wiped a hand over his mouth before locking his hands into fists at his sides. Maybe she should be scared. Maybe she should fear him.
He’d almost deep-sixed him, hadn’t he?
Sam pressed both hands to his cheeks, guiding his eyes to hers, and something changed inside of him. A damn switch flipped, and when their eyes met, the burn inside of him, the desire to kill, was extinguished. The red mist was gone, and all he could see was her.
“What happened?” she asked softly, her lower lip trembling, her eyes now welling.
“I, um—” He reached for her wrists and lowered her hands from his face as he tried to find the words.
“This asshole,” Asher explained, “wasn’t paid to plant the camera in your bedroom. He did that for himself, in case you slept with someone important in D.C. or did something he could blackmail you with later.”
His words had Owen’s skin burning again.
“You son of a bitch.” Emily suddenly appeared and blew past them, lunging for Blane, but Liam grabbed hold of her waist and spun her around. “Easy, darlin’.” She squirmed in his arms for a moment before finally giving up the struggle.
“That’s why you almost killed him?” Sam asked him, disbelief echoing in her tone.
Owen guided his focus back to Sam but found himself unable to speak.
“He wouldn’t have gone through with it,” Asher assured her, giving Owen a slap on the back.
Owen wasn’t so sure, though. The second Blane had begun sputtering about watching Sam get herself off this past Saturday—only an hour before Owen had shown up on her doorstep—he’d snapped.
“But someone did hire him to blackmail me?” Sam rubbed her arms.
He turned away, unable to face her. But the second his eyes fell upon Blane, sitting on the floor, gasping for breath, some of the anger began to resurface.
“He wouldn’t give us the name of the person who’d hired him; he says he didn’t know it,” Asher said when Owen remained quiet. “He did admit to downloading the pictures from your computer, though, and making the blackmail call yesterday.”
“And the delivery guy? He worked for Blane? Where’d he get the photo of Brad and Jason?” Sam faced Asher, since he was the only one giving her answers.
Owen grabbed his phone. He had to call Jess. He’d let Asher explain everything to Sam; he didn’t have the stomach to tell her.
Jess answered straight away. “You’ve got something for me?”
“Blane claims he doesn’t know who hired him, and when I showed him the security image of the deliveryman, there was zero recognition in his eyes.” He let out a breath. “He says he takes jobs like these all the time to prevent certain bills from getting passed in D.C., and he never knows who writes the checks.”
“What kind of money trail are we talking about?” she asked.
“Cayman accounts.”
“That’s doable,” she responded. “I’ve got Knox working on accessing all of the security cameras in and around Blane’s office. If the deliveryman did show up at Blane’s, we’ll get eyes on him.”
His stomach squeezed as his mind circled back to Teteruk. He walked into the hall and away from Blane as Liam zip-tied his hands behind his back. “Do we have a rough idea of when JSOC was hacked by Cheng yet?” he asked in a low voice. He turned and faced the room, observing Sam now talking to Emily, probably trying to calm her down. “Blane was hired four weeks ago, so NSA needs to widen their search time. Someone may have been sitting on this intel for a while.”
“And plotting.”
“We’ll bring Blane your way and resort to some more colorful ways of getting him to talk.” Not waterboarding, but Owen wouldn’t mind—
A red laser beam . . .
“Get down!” he yelled. Dropping the phone, he raced to Sam and Emily as a bullet shattered the window—pegging Blane in the head.
Emily screamed as Blane crumpled to the floor, and Liam barreled toward her, blocking her with his body.
Owen tackled Sam, trying not to crush her while keeping her safe. “Find the shooter,” he shouted to Asher while reaching for the firearm strapped to his ankle.
Asher army-crawled out of the room and to the hall before disappearing from sight.
“Let’s get them to the hall,” Owen said to Liam. “Stay low,” he whispered to Sam, even though the gunfire had ceased. “You hear me? I’m right behind you.”
Owen eyed Luke as he placed his hand over a palm scanner near the door, then lowered his face for a retinal scan.
“Jess will get you set up with access to the place in a bit,” Luke told Owen, and he nodded.
The bark of the gunshot was still in Owen’s ears every time he’d looked at Sam in the last hour—she’d been far too close to getting hurt, or worse.
“You’re certain the shooter didn’t follow us here?” Sam asked.
“Even if he did, he’ll just assume we’re meeting with the FBI since we’re at their headquarters. Well, beneath it.” Luke stepped back from the door once it slid open and allowed Owen and Sam to enter. “He won’t know we’re down here.”
Luke locked up behind him and then pointed down a long, narrow, and dimly lit hall.
Owen hadn’t had much of a choice in bringing Sam with them. The plan to have her show up to work had been blown to pieces the second someone had fired a rifle. No way in hell could she go to her office now.
Thankfully, Emily’s former FBI brother had been on his way to the townhouse after his meeting with the president, and he had taken charge of Emily’s safety.
“And what about the FBI? Do they know we’re here?” She trailed behind Luke, keeping pace with Owen.
“No, they don’t, and the president wants to keep it
that way.” Luke rounded a corner and opened the first door on the right. “There’s a bed and shower in here.”
Sam peered inside but didn’t step into the room. Instead, she turned to face Luke and Owen. “How long will I need to stay here? Will I still be going to Russia tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Luke said. “I think the shooter has been following your every move. It’s possible he even tracked you to Mexico. We’ll check the passenger list for your flight, and we’ll look at every security CCTV you ever walked by in the last few weeks to see if we can catch him.”
Owen wanted to reach out and hold her hand, to do something to comfort her, but at the moment he didn’t think she needed it—maybe she wouldn’t even want it.
She’d remained surprisingly calm, given what had gone down. She’d been Emily’s rock, and even though she had some intense endorphins pumping through her now, she was taking it like a champ, like a woman who’d served in a combat zone before.
He’d thought she would’ve been pissed at him for nearly killing a man in cold blood, but she’d yet to look at him differently. No judgment in her eyes.
Her fingers brushed down the column of her throat. “If he wanted me dead, why didn’t he kill me before, when I was alone? He had plenty of opportunities.”
Owen’s hand swept to the wall at his side. “Because he wasn’t trying to shoot you this morning.”
“Blane, then?” she asked.
“Let us worry about that. We’ll figure it all out,” Luke said, a definitive grit to his voice. He hated being in the dark as much as Owen.
Sam looked at Luke with a cocked brow while pointing a finger at her chest. “How can I not worry about it?”
Luke cleared his throat and sent a pointed glance toward Owen. “I’ll let you two talk. Meet you in a couple minutes? Third door down on the left.” Luke’s blues pivoted to Sam. “We have enough security and alarms for the SEALs all the way at Dam Neck to hear, so, there’s no way anyone will get inside here. But please, don’t leave the room.”
Once Luke had disappeared to their temporary work site, Owen motioned for her to head into the room. He took a few measured breaths as she eyed the suitcase on the bed and sat next to it.
Now she looked nervous.
A whistling bullet by her head hadn’t seemed to rock her so much as whatever was on her mind now.
“The team brought your stuff from the hotel.” He leaned against the doorframe, trying to act casual, even though his heart was scaling higher and higher.
She kicked off her heels and rubbed her calf muscles.
His eyes lingered longer than necessary on her fingers as they smoothed over her tan legs.
“This is just too much,” she said softly. “I’m in what feels like a bunker that could withstand a nuclear blast, and some guy blew a hole in my best friend’s boyfriend’s head.” Her hands rested atop her thighs. “And then, there’s Russia,” she said, almost sarcastically. “We can’t forget about that possible war if the Russians discover the truth about what happened.”
“Sorry,” he said, as if that could mean anything. “And I’m sorry you had to see someone die this morning, too.”
She lifted her hand to the base of her throat. “You almost killed Blane before the shooter did.”
He strode a few steps deeper into the room, which had a full-size bed against one wall and a small end table and lamp next to it. It felt sort of like a prison, although he doubted penitentiaries had bedside lamps. “Yeah, I guess I snapped.” The admission felt good, surprisingly.
“You beat me to it. I would’ve throttled the guy myself for using Emily like that.”
Her words had his gaze flying north to find her eyes.
“They had sex,” she said, as if she’d taken a bite of something sour. “She was being used because of me.”
His mind veered to the vibrator in her bedroom, and it had his blood boiling again, thinking about Blane watching Sam use it.
“I think death is a bit of a harsh punishment, but right now, I can’t feel bad for him.” She shook her head, her eyes falling in a daze to the floor. “I watched him die, and I don’t feel sorry for him. Does that make me a horrible person?”
He ate up the space between them in two quick steps. The old bed squeaked and sank a little as he lowered his weight onto it. “Of course not. What he did was inexcusable, and it’s natural to be angry.”
He had to do it now, he had to reach for her hand and comfort her. Now was when she needed it. It wasn’t because she was scared for her life, but because some part of her felt the way he did on the inside right now—justice had been delivered for a wrongdoing.
“You stopped me from killing him, you know.” He allowed his heart to slip back into its rightful place before speaking again. “I may have gone through with it. I was so furious. But at the sound of your voice . . . thank you.” He squeezed her hand. “I don’t want to be a killer, even if the guy is an asshole. It shouldn’t have been up to me to decide his fate.”
Hearing his lofty words, he tensed.
Teteruk was a different story. Teteruk was an enemy of the state. He had murdered Jason and Brad, and God knew how many other people. His fate had been decided the second he took the lives of two Navy SEALs ten years ago.
But was Sam’s father any better for helping broker the deal that had allowed a killer to live?
That would be like blaming every defense attorney in D.C. for doing their jobs and representing criminals, but . . .
“Does that mean you’ve reconsidered going after Tet—”
“Let’s focus on finding our people first.” She could read his mind, apparently.
Her brow furrowed. “What people?”
He hung his head and released her hand. He was having trouble keeping track of the parts of the op she knew about and the parts she didn’t.
He stood, gently closed the door, and leaned against it. With crossed arms, he studied the beautiful woman sitting before him. She didn’t belong in a place like this, or in the mess of a situation they were all now in.
“Was someone taken? More than one someone?” she asked softly.
He didn’t want to answer her, but hell, he was going to have to. In his mind, he’d be off the team soon, anyway.
The second he found and killed Teteruk, if the guy was alive, at least, Owen would be done.
He knew Sam would never betray his team, just like Luke had known the same about Eva. “Two Navy SEALs and one CIA officer were taken last week. And as of this morning, I learned Teteruk is missing as well.”
“They were involved in the op from Ukraine, too?” She pressed her elbows to her knees and leaned forward. “When we were on the boat . . . that’s when you got the call, right? That’s why you came to Washington?”
He nodded. “And then you wound up being placed at the center of it all.” He lightly shook his head, still in disbelief at how everything had gone down. “We thought the image you got came from our government files.”
“What do you mean?” She was on her feet now.
“The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command servers were most likely hacked, so we assumed the photo you got was from the mission files.”
“But it wasn’t?”
He looked skyward for a moment to corral his anger. “It was from one of the blackmail photos Pavlo Teteruk used to extort money from the U.S.—the reason he remained alive, even after what he did.”
If there were ever a time to tell her about her father, it’d be now, but for some reason, he didn’t think he could do it.
“Shit.” Her hands went to her hips.
“It looks like Teteruk was taken before our men were, which means they used his photos to ID our guys.”
“Was Teteruk’s name in the JSOC files?”
“Close enough. The location to his compound was in the file. He’s been living in Georgia, not far from the Russian border. He was taken from there eight or so days ago.”
She scratched at the s
ide of her long neck, as if in thought. Perhaps she was sweeping through the details in her head, trying to make sense of it all. “I, uh, shouldn’t keep you, then. I should let you get to work. You need to find your people. You need to put an end to this.”
“That’s the plan.” He closed the gap between them and wrapped a hand over her shoulder. “Will you be okay while I’m gone?”
Her lips rolled inward. “I’ll be whatever I need to be.”
“That’s not what I want to hear.” He smoothed the pad of his thumb over her cheek, holding her eyes. “Don’t tell me what you think I need to hear. Tell me the truth.”
“The truth,” she whispered, nodding her head ever so lightly. “When I know the truth about how I feel, you’ll be the first one I tell.”
His chest grew heavy, as if his heart was growing in size and competing for space. “I’m here for you. I haven’t been for the last ten years like I should have, but I’m here now.” He stepped away from her and withdrew contact. “I promise.”
“You don’t owe me anything. You never did.” She turned and reached for her suitcase.
She was using her actions as a buffer between them. He knew a thing or two about that, but for some reason, he didn’t want her to do this with him; he didn’t want her to feel like she had to wear a mask, which he was pretty sure her father had forced her to do for years.
His hand slipped to her hip and then skated around to her abdomen, pulling her back against him. He had her gently pinned to him, his way of letting her know how he felt. Even if he couldn’t voice his feelings, he wanted her to know.
She leaned into his touch and tilted her head against the top of his shoulder. Her hand fell over his, and their fingers locked tight against her stomach.
Her powerhouse work perfume was subtle now, and beneath the flowery layers, the beautiful scent was simply her. He could breathe her in all day.
“We’ll get through this. I promise,” he whispered into her ear.
He released his hold of her and left the room without looking back. Because he couldn’t look back.
Stealth Ops Series Box Set Page 40
