Her breath hitched and her eyes flashed, but she nodded. “Yes.”
“What was your brother’s relationship with your father?”
She grimaced. “They were never very close, but it’s not like they hated each other.” She paused. “My father wasn’t around much and he wasn’t affectionate. He did seem to favor me and my sister over our brother—at least when he wasn’t yelling at us or slapping us around.”
He winced. “Was it obvious?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“It might. Come on, Allie, you’re going to have to look at this objectively. Put your personal feelings aside and try to focus on this as just another case.”
She blinked. “That’s what I’ve been doing ever since I graduated from the academy and was handed my badge. And believe it or not, for the most part, I was actually able to do it. To compartmentalize, so to speak. And then I saw his picture with Nevsky and it brought everything back. Tenfold. Part of me really thought he was dead and I had almost come to accept that. But . . .” She blew out a breath.
“That picture changed things.”
“Changed everything. Now my emotions are all over the place.” She swallowed. “I . . .”
“Talk to me. Please, trust me.” He raked a hand through his hair. “You owe me that at least.”
Her jaw dropped. “I owe you?”
“Okay, maybe owe is a bad choice of words, but you . . . we . . . you . . . argh!” He paced with her. From one end of the small area to the other. “You let me fall in love with you and you had no intention of reciprocating those feelings.”
It hurt. He’d admit it. He had only himself to blame for not acknowledging her signals. Okay, for ignoring them.
She spun and faced him, hands on her hips. “How dare you!”
He stopped and glared down at her. “How dare I?” He frowned. “How dare I what?”
“How dare you blame me? I’m the one who tried to keep distance between us, remember? I’m the one who said I didn’t need to meet your family. I’m the one who insisted that being romantically involved was about as stupid a move as any two partners could make. Remember that? Remember those conversations?” She jabbed him in the chest and he didn’t even flinch. Just continued to stare at her.
He did remember. But she’d seemed so lost, so lonely, he’d done his best to convince her to let her guard down. And she had. At least partially. Enough for it to hurt when she felt she had no choice but to put the walls back up.
“Don’t love me, Linc. As much as I may want you to, you can’t love me.”
And just like that, her words gave him hope and shattered his heart all at the same time. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t know where my future is going to be,” she whispered. “I don’t know where I’m going to wind up. My entire existence has been wrapped up in finding my brother and getting justice for my parents and my sister. I have nothing left for anything else.”
“What about after?”
“After what?”
“After it’s all over and Nevsky and Gregori are behind bars?”
She bit her lip and let her gaze run over him. His nerves stretched at the long silence. “Why don’t we wait and see if I even survive?”
He winced and reached for her.
She backed away. “Don’t.”
Linc let his hands drop while his heart beat a frantic rhythm. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You can’t lose what you don’t have,” she said softly. “Good night, Linc.” She turned to walk toward her room.
“Allie?” he said.
She stopped, but didn’t turn.
“Look at me, please.”
She hesitated for so long, he wondered if she would, but finally, she faced him, her eyes meeting his. Shuttered and cold. At first he couldn’t speak. But the longer they stared at one another, she seemed to struggle to maintain her expression, and he thought he saw something seep into her gaze. Something that said she was hurting just as much as he.
She blinked and the look was gone. “What is it, Linc?”
“Just remember. Justice and revenge are two very different things.”
Allie tore her eyes away from Linc’s and shoved the hovering tears aside. She didn’t have time to cry. Crying accomplished nothing except to stuff up her nose and make her head hurt. Her father’s hand had connected with her head more than once because of tears, and she’d learned at an early age to hide them. Linc’s words continued to echo, rolling around in her head, and she decided he was right. She did owe him. She owed him her honesty. It almost killed her to realize she couldn’t give it to him. Not all of it anyway.
Justice. Revenge. He was right about that too. They were definitely two very different things.
She drew in a deep breath and returned to the couch in the shared living area. “I know, Linc.”
“Could have fooled me.” When she didn’t offer to discuss it anymore, he shook his head, but his granite features betrayed his inner turmoil.
She’d hurt him terribly, which had never been her intent. “Linc—”
“Okay, on to something else,” he said.
“What?”
“Henry sent the security footage of Daria leaving the day of the raid.”
Allie perked up. As tired as she knew they both were, she wanted to see it. “Was he furious?”
“To put it mildly. He said for us to watch the footage and call him when we’re done.”
“I’m ready.”
He hooked his laptop up to the large screen television in the corner and brought the footage up.
“He started it at the point where Daria runs out of the building.” He ran the video. Daria darted out of the building, only to be stopped by one of the SWAT team members and Henry, who pointed them to the van. Then Henry reentered the building. “It’s kind of jerky,” Linc muttered.
Allie didn’t take her eyes from the screen. “Might be an older camera.”
Minutes later, Daria popped out of the back of the van with Smythe escorting her to a bathroom in a nearby building. Before entering, she turned, her attention obviously caught on something, then she swung away and stepped inside.
“What was she looking at?” Allie asked.
“I don’t know, but Henry’s right. This doesn’t give us much.”
“Play it again, will you?”
He did.
“Stop it right there,” she said. “Just before going inside the building with the bathroom, she’s looking mighty hard at something—or someone.”
He played it a third time. “You’re right.”
When it ended, she leaned back. “I want to know what she was looking at so intently. What—or who—did she see that made her sneak out of the window?”
The video played for the fourth time. “There aren’t any more angles?” Allie asked. “No other cameras?”
“Henry said two were broken. This one was the best of the two that were working.”
She rose and paced from one end of the small area to the other. She snapped her fingers. “The news cameras. The media was there. They had to be filming it.”
“Good idea. I’ll get Annie to take care of that while we talk to Henry.”
Tired of pacing but needing to move to stay awake, Allie slipped into the kitchen area and pulled a Coke from the small refrigerator.
“What in the blazes do you two think you’re doing!”
Allie winced at Henry’s outrage. Linc had the phone on speaker and had set it in the middle of the coffee table.
She walked back into the living area. “Hi, Henry.”
“Are you out of your minds? How am I supposed to deal with your crazy stunts? I can pull a lot of strings, but I’m not a miracle worker! And why aren’t you answering my calls? Can you count? Have you seen the number of times I’ve called? This is inexcusable!”
Allie met Linc’s gaze and held a finger to her lips. He nodded. They’d let the man rant, then come up
with another plan.
Henry finally fell silent.
The pause lasted longer than was comfortable. Allie cleared her throat. “Henry? You’re . . . um . . . right. We’re sorry. We should have definitely looped you in on everything. It’s just things were going really, really fast and you were dealing with Killian—”
“Killian’s dead.”
Allie flinched. “What?”
“He died at the hospital. They were going to set his jaw, and whatever pain meds they gave him caused him to have an allergic reaction and he died.”
Linc dropped his head into his hands. “Were you able to get anything out of him about Nevsky before he died?”
“No. The man had a broken jaw. I was waiting for them to set it, then I was going to hand him my iPad and have him answer questions. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to that point.”
Linc pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right. Just out of curiosity, what’s the status on the stolen equipment from the military bases? Did you get the people behind it?”
“Most of them. We’re still rounding up the equipment, although it looks like a lot of it landed overseas. Terrorism is our first thought, of course, which is why we’ve got CTU, the JTTF, and our international branches all involved. I’ve been directed to stay on Nevsky for now.”
“So,” Allie said, “we have a problem.”
“We have a lot of problems,” Henry said. “Care to elaborate?”
“Gregori Radchenko knows I’m alive.”
Henry swore and Allie grimaced.
“How?” he demanded.
She explained. “We feel sure Radchenko was sent to kill Daria. What we don’t know is how he found her. We figure he’s got some kind of tracker on her. Could be her laptop or phone. Annie can’t access either device, so it’s got to be something other than her GPS leading them to her.”
Henry sighed. “Any other ideas on how to find her before Nevsky and Radchenko do?”
“No.” Allie pursed her lips. “I think we should stop looking for Daria.”
Linc raised a brow.
“If we can find Nevsky or Radchenko, then we’ll find Daria,” she said.
Henry fell silent, then finally said, “I’ll work on it from that angle then and get back to you when I know something. In the meantime, stay out of sight. Nevsky probably knows you’re alive at this point.”
“Then I can come out of hiding.”
“No! Are you nuts? There’s always the chance that Radchenko hasn’t said anything to him.”
Allie frowned. “I doubt that.”
“Let’s wait until we know for sure.”
“How are we going to know that?”
“We’ll know.”
Anger stirred and the man slammed a fist onto the dash as he stared up at the window. The dark seemed to mock him. They were in there. Both of them. Alive and scheming and who knew what else?
Six months of planning had gone down the drain because of . . . what?
He didn’t know.
That was the problem. If he had even an inkling of what he’d missed, he wouldn’t be so agitated. Okay, he would be, but whatever. But after so much careful planning, to have the plan fail left him reeling.
The drone had been a genius idea, and so no matter how many times he ran the plan around and around in his mind, he couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong.
Because nothing had gone wrong. It should have worked perfectly. Everything . . . everyone had been in place. Death by drone had been a sure thing.
Except his target was still alive. Like a cat with nine lives.
He gave a growl of disgust and fought the rage that bubbled up, threatening to consume him.
No.
He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Control, remember? He had to stay in control or everything would be ruined.
He slipped out of his truck to pace and shoot glances at the still-dark window. Cars passed, people walked the sidewalk, with no idea that he had murder on his agenda.
While his plans fell apart, the city bustled on in ignorance. He ran a hand down a cheek that needed a shave.
Maybe his original plan couldn’t be salvaged—or even the second one—but in the end, he could make it all come together.
He’d already started over and, so far, seemed to be on track.
This time he couldn’t fail. He wouldn’t fail.
His target would die and all would be right for the first time in a very long while.
Although, he couldn’t help thinking, it should have been right by now. And would have been had Daria not interfered. Tonight, he’d almost had her, but she’d slipped through his fingers like the slippery little eel she was. She could ruin everything. More so than anyone else on the planet right now. More so even than Allie. If only she’d kept her nose out of things that weren’t her business.
His fingers curled into a fist and he pictured himself smashing it into Daria’s face. So much more satisfying than using a gun. He wanted to hear her scream before he killed her. He scoffed.
Never would he have imagined that a seventeen-year-old brat could ruin him. Fortunately, he didn’t think she knew exactly how much power she held or she would have used it by now. Which meant he had to move quickly to make sure he kept it that way.
So . . . he had to get rid of Daria.
Permanently.
Then he’d deal with Allie.
17
Linc woke heavy-headed and feeling like he’d been drugged. After the caffeine crash, he hadn’t been able to stay awake another minute. Allie had declared herself fit to keep watch and he’d had to let her. The bedside clock said he’d slept the sleep of the dead for five hours. He rolled out of the bed, automatically palmed his weapon from the bedside table, and padded into the living area to find the lights off and the room empty. He crossed the room to Allie’s open bedroom door. The bathroom light was on and the door cracked. Nothing that set his worry meter off.
“Allie?” His hushed whisper echoed in the small area.
“Over here.”
He whirled back to the common area to find her sitting on the floor under the window. Dressed all in black, she blended into the wall. “What are you doing in the dark?”
“Watching the door. The dark gives me the advantage.”
If someone came in the window, she would be right there with the element of surprise. If someone came in the door, their silhouette would make an easy target. If someone came in shooting, Allie was already on the floor. She was smart. She was a good agent. And he had a feeling she could be even more deadly than he might have imagined.
“Hello?” She plugged in a small night-light and a soft glow filled the room.
“Sorry.” He’d been admiring her as she’d been talking. “What?”
“Why are you awake? Or at least appear to be awake, but aren’t answering questions coherently. Are you sleepwalking?”
He grunted a laugh. “No. I’m here because it’s my turn to take a shift. Go to bed.”
She rose to her feet in one smooth move away from the window and tucked her weapon into her shoulder holster. “I think I know our next move.”
“What’s that?”
“My family was going into the WITSEC program shortly before everyone was killed.”
Linc stilled. “You just keep coming at me with the surprises, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry. Truly. I . . . you . . .” She sighed. “You made me want more, Linc.”
Her soft words seared something deep within him. “Same here.”
“No, you don’t understand. I never allowed myself to even hope that I could have a ‘normal’ life. I have way too much baggage to bring into a relationship. And then we became partners and you introduced me to your family.” She gave a small smile. “You were all so normal. I thought you were all perfect too.” He scoffed and she wrinkled her nose. “But then I got to know you all and realized you were people just like everyone else. People who’d suffered trag
edy and hard times.”
“It comes with being in law enforcement, I guess.”
“It comes from simply being alive.”
“Maybe so. At least I still have them, though.”
“Yes, of course. But it gave me hope.”
“Hope for what?”
“A future. A family. A life. When I started to believe that Gregori was dead, I wanted to believe that maybe ‘normal’ was possible for me.”
“But?” he asked.
“But then I saw his face and I knew that I’d never have a future until he could no longer hurt anyone else.” She locked her eyes on his. “He’s out there killing, Linc. He’s Nevsky’s killing machine.”
“One of them, I know.”
“And it won’t end until he’s stopped.”
“I know that too.”
“So, here’s what I’m thinking. Back to the WITSEC. As I’ve told you before, I had perfected the art of eavesdropping.”
“You have quite a bit in common with Daria, don’t you?”
“Why do you think I like her so much?” She quirked him a lopsided smile that faded quickly. “Anyway, my dad came home the night before the shooting. He had new IDs and we were supposed to pack everything up and be ready to leave when the marshals came for us. I always had a go-bag ready, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. Gregori had been preoccupied and sullen for weeks, but honestly, I didn’t pay him much attention. When he was home, he was arguing with our father—” She broke off and stilled. Then paced to her room and back.
“What?”
“He said ‘your father.’”
Linc blinked. “You lost me.”
“In the woods earlier, he said ‘your father,’ not ‘our father.’”
“You said he called him a liar.” Linc settled on the couch and looked up at her. “Maybe he doesn’t claim him anymore? Maybe he disassociates himself from everyone he kills as his way of justifying what he does.”
“Maybe.” She frowned. “Anyway, my point to all of this is that I couldn’t remember Gregori’s new name. No matter how long and hard I thought about it, I couldn’t remember it.”
“And?”
“Tonight I did. I don’t know if just seeing him sparked it, but I remembered it. Grayson Radcliffe. Of course, I knew the Radcliffe part, but not the Grayson. I searched every record I could find on Gregori Radchenko. His name only popped up in the police reports, never associated with any other crimes. Naturally, Gregori Radcliffe came up with nothing.”
Vow of Justice Page 15
