by Nana Malone
He nodded, blinking rapidly, trying to clear his head. The sedative was powerful. It was only absorbed when it came in contact with human skin, which was why I’d used my nail to peel it off. He started to call out again, and I leaned over him. “No need for that. I can help you. Do you need water? I’ll get you water.”
I started to turn, but he pulled on my hand. “No, no. You stay.”
He slowly blinked, and then he was out.
I held my breath as I checked his pulse. He was breathing and his pulse was good. I snapped my fingers and then checked his pupils. When I was satisfied, I tapped my comm unit. “He’s out.”
Addie was up in a flash. She had taken the pins from her hair and mine, and made a makeshift knife. That was the only weapon we were getting, so if anyone came through that door, she’d have to make it work. It was the only shot we had.
My job was to find the safe.
That proved slightly more difficult.
If I were a safe, where the fuck would I be?
There was one behind a painting in the main room, but when I checked the schematics, it wasn’t the one we were looking for.
Addie checked the curtains. “Any luck?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
And then I took a closer look inside his closet and said, “Hold on.” I moved aside a rack of his dress shirts and hit pay dirt.
I tapped my comm unit and said, “Tyler, I’m here. What do we have?”
“Okay, grab your phone and turn on the app I put on it.”
“Okay, done.”
“All right, keep the app pointed at the safe and let it run the encryption.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Well, it’s checking the pattern of fingerprints, the ones that have been touched most often, and it’s cross-referencing them with things we know about Stellan. It’s going to pull up the access code for you.”
“Are you kidding me? What if it guesses wrong?”
“The encryption device we’re stealing is one we already have. We just don’t want anyone else to have it.”
I laughed. “Of course.”
Within seconds, I had the code and typed it in. Holding my breath, praying to God that this worked, I turned the handle. I waited for an alarm, bracing myself for hell to rain down, but nothing happened. It opened, and inside the safe, I found files, money, and many passports. I didn’t have much time, but I quickly photographed each of the passports because it would give us a way to track Tusk’s movements if he traveled under an alias.
Then I grabbed the device, put everything back the way I found it, wiped down the keypad, and closed it up before rearranging the shirts exactly how I’d found them.
I came running out of the closet, only pausing to grab my shoes. I checked on Stellan and found he was still out cold.
Addie nodded her head at me. “You have it?”
I nodded. “Yep. Let’s go.”
But as we ran for the door, the power went out.
Addie’s voice was sharp. “Tyler, what the fuck?”
“It’s not us. Get out of there.”
We ran for the door, surprised to find that there was no guard. Then we heard gunshots down the hall. Hurriedly, we barricaded ourselves back in the room and ran for the balcony. “Fuck, Tyler, do we have an exit?”
“Back stairs on the balcony. The gardens are open and clear, but we’ve got company in the house.”
“What the fuck do you mean ‘company’?” I asked as we ran to the balcony.
Then a litany of swears came over the comms, and from the roof Kira muttered under her breath, “It looks like fucking Exodus. Retreat.”
“Who has the decryption device?” Tyler asked.
I piped up. “I’ve got it.”
“Only Lyra on the primary exit route then. Everyone else on secondary,” said Tyler. His voice was stony and cold.
Addie stared at me. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know. What the fuck is Exodus doing here? Aren’t they in bed with assholes like this?” Had Exodus come to clean house?
She quickly motioned that she was switching to B channel, and I followed suit.
“What’s up?”
“I was looking into why Tyler’s here, due to my general mistrust of assholes.”
She navigated barefoot down the ancient, narrow wooden stairs that led to the beach. It was eerily quiet out there. None of the guards were around.
“Addie, you know you’re going to get slapped for doing that.”
She shrugged. “I don’t care. He doesn’t matter right now. But listen, on the last six missions he’s been on, Exodus has shown up for at least four of them and interrupted, tried to take a target that we were going after. Something’s going on.”
I frowned. “Do you think Exodus came to clean house?”
Exodus. The Firm had a history with them. We all used to be one organization. The original founders, Aidan Saint-James and Orion McClintock, were the best of friends, former spec ops, and wanted to change the world. Together, they founded a covert organization that could take care of the scum of the earth. But at some point, they diverged over their philosophies of how exactly that should be done and had a falling out. As a result, Aidan Saint-James kept The Firm, and Orion McClintock formed Exodus. But rumor was that Exodus went dirty and became hit men for hire. What were they doing on our jobs?
“I don’t know. We’ll find out, but be safe.”
At the bottom of the stairs, I started sprinting left, and she went right. Neither one of us said goodbye. We knew the rules. We just switched back to the main comm channel and bolted.
As I sprinted for the boat, shoes in my hand and the decryption device shoved in my bra, I glanced back up at the house on top of the hill and saw someone running. They had a long, strong gait, and their gun was aimed at me.
I started running in a zigzag pattern, waiting for the bullets to rain down, but they didn’t.
He was waiting for something. What?
I turned back. The sun had already begun to set, making the sky a light purple hue. I frowned because there was something familiar about him, but that wasn’t one of our uniforms. We tended to favor black leather, with a tighter black jacket, but he was wearing tactical cargo pants and jacket.
He was Exodus.
But he still didn’t shoot.
I climbed into the boat, taking care to make sure that my wig was on correctly after the long sprint. If I couldn’t straighten my hair, I wore a wig. The last thing we needed was anyone recognizing me because of my Afro or my curls. I started the engine and turned back to make sure the Exodus agent wasn’t coming after me. He wasn’t. He just stood there, staring.
I tapped my comm unit. “I have the device, and I’m coming in.”
Tyler’s voice was satisfied. “Copy, I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point.”
“Roger.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling. I knew that Exodus agent… but from where?
* * *
Marcus
“On your mark.”
I checked the scope. My target was a woman with long, flowing dark hair. She was getting in a boat.
“I see a target escaping at the north side of the beach. Already in the boat.”
“Do you have a shot?”
That was the tricky part. From this distance and with the right wind, I could probably hit her.
But something itched over my skin every time my finger moved to the trigger. I had a long-range rifle. I could take the shot.
At least try.
I couldn’t do it though. I knew female agents were just as deadly as the male ones. Hell, I worked with many of them that I wouldn’t want to cross. But there was something about that woman. She was familiar, like an echo I already knew.
She reminded me of someone.
Simone.
Simone Bellevue had been my fiancée and also an agent. We’d been stationed in Paris together. When my mission in Prague hadn’t ended
well, I’d been shot pretty badly. She’d come to see me at the safe house. Rhodes had arranged it.
But we were ambushed, and someone had killed Simone that night. She’d thrown her body over me, and they’d made a clean kill shot. I hadn’t been able to protect her when they had come for me.
Rhodes and the rest of the team took them out. I had never really recovered from losing her. Because of love, she’d come for me and paid with her life. I’d never been able to shake that feeling of helplessness. And that was four years ago.
“Agent Black, report.”
I dragged my attention back to the task at hand and pressed the comm unit. “Already gone. I’m heading back to the house.”
“Copy.”
As I ran back, still unable to shake the lingering familiarity of the woman on the beach, I asked, “What’s the status of the device?”
“We’re working on getting in the safe now.”
“I want to see that guest list.”
“Copy, it’ll be here when you get back.” As I headed toward the house, the hairs on the back of my neck refused to relax. What was it about that agent?
I made a mental note to go through a catalog of our most wanted. Maybe that’s why she seemed familiar. I hadn’t been able to see her face, but there was something about the way she ran. She’d moved like a dancer, lithe, easy, athletic. Still, my skin itched just thinking about her. I wanted to know who the fuck she was. When I reached the house, I found Rhodes in the master bedroom. Tusk was seemingly passed out.
“Are we going to revive him?”
Rhodes shook his head. “No, he’s completely out of it. A little too conveniently because getting into the safe is tricky now.”
“And the rest of the house guests?” Tusk had been throwing some kind of party.
“When the shooting started, everybody scattered. We’re already tapped into local police. We have three minutes before their arrival. We already dispatched all of Tusk’s security team. What’s your assessment?”
The Firm had beat us here again. The woman had been with them, but had they gotten what they came for?
Rhodes snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Hey, Earth to Marcus. What’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right. If this was The Firm, I caught sight of one of their agents running off along the beach. It’s like I knew her.”
He lifted a brow. “You recognized her?”
I shook my head. “No. She was too far away, but she was so fucking familiar. I can feel it.”
He looked at me quizzically. “You’re not making any sense, man.”
“Fuck, I can’t explain it. Just trust me.”
Rhodes blew out a low breath. “All right, if you think you know her, after debriefing go through some footage. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Neither one of us believed in luck.
One of the decryption techs finally sent a text that hit our tablets.
Rhodes tapped in the key he gave us, and we prayed. I checked my watch. We only had forty-five seconds. “We’ve got to go. This place is about to be crawling with police.”
Rhodes nodded. “I hear you.”
He got the safe open and searched inside. All he found were passports, money, jewels. Nothing of interest.
He cursed under his breath. “We have a problem. I repeat, we have a problem. The device is missing.”
And I knew the woman on the beach had taken what I’d come there to collect.
* * *
Lyra
Once back at The Firm headquarters, I couldn’t shake the feeling or the intensity I’d felt from the man on the bluffs.
My brain was still trying to lock onto any detail that might help me identify him as I took the decryption device to tech and headed down to the conference room for debriefing.
I was sore and achy, and all I wanted to do was crawl into my own damn bed. But the debriefing came first. I eased down into one of the conference room chairs, the normally smooth leather feeling like sandpaper on my raw nerves.
When Roz walked in, she did not look pleased.
Her piercing baby blue gaze said everything, and in my head, I heard her voice asking what she’d not yet said with her mouth. What the fuck happened on that mission?
In reality, she spoke only one word. My name. It was clipped and businesslike. Roz was not there to play. “Lyra?”
I understood her confusion. I had my own in spades. “I don’t know what happened. I retrieved the device from the safe. Addie was watching my back. Once we had the device, we went to the door for egress as planned. But there was no guard. Then we heard shooting, so we went to the secondary point of egress. As you can hear on the comms recording, we have no idea what went on inside the house. We were just as blind as you were.”
She turned her attention to Tyler then. “You were on over watch. How the hell did Exodus know we were there?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. The mission was airtight. It should have been an easy in and out. But they must have been after the device too, which means someone has been feeding them intel.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it was a deal gone wrong with Tusk himself. But they came fully armed, so they were expecting trouble, which would hardly have been the case if they’d had a deal with Tusk.”
Roz leaned her hands on the desk and pinned each of the five of us with her glare. “I want this buttoned up. Exodus has shown up on one too many of our missions. They know our moves before we do, so we need to figure out why. I’m concerned they’re going to show up on the Stannis Prochenko mission as well, because right now, they are too much of a constant presence. And they seem to be one step ahead of us. I want it locked down. Tyler, you’re in charge.”
I almost started to argue, but I was too tired, and Tyler was technically the senior agent. I hated it, but it was true. Besides, we had a common goal. If Exodus was trying to infiltrate our missions, they were up to something. The question was, what?
Roz crossed her arms. “We do have another problem. The Bacchanal organizers have asked for a guest list. Couples or throuples. They are being very inclusive in that respect, but absolutely no singles are allowed. You are going to need to look the part. So I’m going to assign—”
I knew what she was going to say. I was about to get paired with Tyler. And no way no how was that going to work for me, so I piped up with something outlandish. “Do you think the fair and the exhibit are a smokescreen? The artist’s brother has ties with Victus. She’s never been associated directly, but he’s her half-brother. If it’s a smokescreen, no doubt they’ll be vetting all the guests. We should pair with civilians if we can.”
Roz lifted a brow. “Go on.”
If we do some civilian pairings, especially since the nature of the event is geared toward couples, it would be really suspicious if two of us vanish at once. But if one of us needs to sneak off for a ‘bathroom break’ while we’re paired with a civilian, it will look completely natural. No red flags.”
“That’s an interesting idea. I can set it up. We have some civilian marketing partners.”
I started to breathe a little easier. At least that meant I wouldn’t be stuck with Tyler, and I’d already set it up to go with Marcus.
But that would put him in danger. Right in the crosshairs.
But while I was worrying about Marcus’s safety, Tyler was trying to get his digs in. “While this whole couples thing might actually be a real problem we have, let’s face it; Lyra just wants to take her new boyfriend on a mission, like it’s show and tell or something.”
Addie, ever loyal, chimed in. “Tyler, don’t be jealous. It’s not becoming. Marcus may be a civilian, but he lives and works in the community. He’ll provide Lyra with a good cover.”
Roz was nodding. Why was she nodding? This was a terrible idea. All I wanted was to avoid Tyler. I hadn’t meant to drag Marcus into it, but there might not be an easy way out of this one since I’d already asked him, and Roz appeared to think it was
a great idea.
“Right. I think Lyra’s partner is settled. It looks good, and he’ll be an easy-access pass. Tyler, we’ll need to find you someone above reproach. Perhaps the local librarian. Addie and Kira, same goes for both of you. We’ll make it work.” She then turned her attention back to me. “Good call, Lyra. Smart thinking.”
As Roz walked out of the briefing room, Tyler turned to me and scowled. “If your boyfriend fucks this up, I get to shoot him. And trust me, I’ve been looking forward to that.”
Chapter 10
Lyra
I was a nervous wreck on Saturday night. What the hell had possessed me to drag Marcus into this?
You have to look out for him. Try and keep him safe.
My team was in the field. It would be all right. I checked my appearance in the mirror one more time, hardly recognizing the woman I saw. This woman’s eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed. She looked excited. Preparing for the mission this week had left me very little personal time, so I hadn’t seen much of Marcus. This was all far more complicated than I had bargained for.
I’d opted for an outfit that I could move in. A skirt, showing my legs, but paired with breathable flats, a plain white T-shirt, and a slim-fit leather jacket to hide all my weapons.
I kept my hair simple, leaving it curly. Besides, I didn’t have time to fiddle with it. When I’d originally thought my partner was going to be Addie or Tyler, I hadn’t planned to take time to bother with it. Now that it was an actual date with Marcus, I wanted to look better, but given the lack of prep time, natural was as good as it got.
When the knock sounded, I took a deep breath before I opened the door. Marcus stood on the other side looking like he’d just walked off of a magazine shoot. He was holding a bouquet of flowers and wearing dark wash jeans, partially unlaced black boots, a light blue sweater that matched his eyes, and a comfortable looking leather jacket on top. His hair was this sort of messy, wild disarray of dark curls that I wanted to run my fingers through. The man looked good enough to eat, and he knew it.
