Christos exhaled and glanced toward the window. “No. They are here to assist me.”
“So what now?” Virginia asked tightly. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Relax, sweet. I’ve always liked you. You and I are a lot alike, really. We share a seething hatred for my father. We’re both clever. Driven. Willing to go to great lengths to get what we want. That’s why I’ve decided to offer you a proposition.”
“What proposition?”
“Return to Greece with me. Together, we’ll put the old man out of our misery and take control of his empire.”
“What about your associate?”
Christos shrugged. “He will not be an issue.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Easy?” Christos laughed. “No, not at all. But, like you, I’ve been planning and preparing for a long time. Thanks to the commander here, all of the pieces are finally in place. At this very moment, his rescue team is breaching the perimeter and soon, this house will be overrun. There will be an epic standoff, and everyone inside will die. Him first.”
Virginia moved in front of Gabe. “No. It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“I disagree. If there’s one thing you’ve taught me, Virginia, it’s that showing any mercy, leaving any survivors, will come back to bite me on the ass. Now, either you kill him, or I will.”
Virginia exhaled and extracted a weapon. She raised her hand and pointed it at Gabe. Her eyes held so much regret, so much pain. “I’m so sorry.”
Gabe held his breath, but refused to look away.
Then she turned and pointed the gun at Christos, who laughed.
“Please, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not the one you want. You’ve spent your entire adult life trying to get to my father, and I’m serving him up to you on a silver platter. Do you really expect me to believe that you’d actually—”
A shot rang out, stopping Christos from finishing what he was going to say. Gabe raised his eyes in time to see Christos collapse on the floor, a blossoming stain of red on his forehead. Then Virginia was next to him, cutting through the ties and the tape.
“Why did you—”
“Can you stand?” she cut off his question even as she was tugging him to his feet, wrapping one of his arms over her shoulders and grabbing him around the waist. He stumbled, nearly taking both of them down.
“That’s a no,” she said, shouldering him over toward one of the sofas and pushing him down. She quickly wiped down the gun and placed it in his hands. “You’ve probably got a concussion. Stay here. Backup’s on the way.”
“No. Stay.” It was an effort to get the words out. Her face kept going out of focus. He reached out and wrapped his hand around her wrist.
“I can’t. I still have a few things to take care of.”
“Bullshit. Stay. Tenebris? Really?”
She looked at him then, her eyes softening. She cupped his face and kissed him. “Everything is going to be okay, Gabe. I promise.”
Then she quickly gathered the photos, tossed them into the flames of the fireplace, and was gone.
Chapter Forty
Gabriel – Three Months Later
Gabe stared out at the lake, watching the break of yet another dawn in the Pacific northwest. The air was still. Chilly. Fog hovered just above the water like a ghostly blanket of white and grey, suffused with just the lightest tinge of reddish orange, a stark contrast to the deep purplish-blues and greens of the surrounding ridge.
Peaceful. Quiet. Not at all indicative of the maelstrom taking place in his head. Or his chest.
It was hard to believe it was all over.
It was even harder to believe the way things had actually gone down. By the time his team got to him, Virginia was long gone. Christos, the bodies of his live-in staff, and at least a dozen armed men lay dead or dying, including Darius’s enforcers.
He was taken away for medical care and debriefing, then released after a week. The events of that night were sketchy, but from what he’d been able to piece together, someone had sent out an SOS to his team on their secure line. When neither he nor Mancini responded, Pixie escalated to Silas, and Dawson assembled a team. Shortly afterward, a clean-up crew was brought in, his team was disbanded, and Silas, the fucker, was unavailable and unable or unwilling to answer his calls.
No one would tell him a goddamn thing about Virginia, not even whether she was dead or alive.
Mancini, he was told, had been life-flighted out. His injuries had been more severe, but he was expected to make a full recovery.
It had been Pixie who had told him the stuff that didn’t make it onto the official report when he went to pick up Fred, including the fact that Mancini had confided to her that it had been Virginia who’d saved his life, too.
Pixie also told him she was leaving her job with the government to work for a private organization so she could be close to Mancini and help him with his recovery. Before she left, however, she quietly forwarded the classified address of the hospital where Mancini would be for the next several weeks.
Unable to contact Silas, Gabe headed there looking for answers. They didn’t want to let him in at first, but one of the guys, a younger SEAL who’d been a medic on one of his former teams, recognized him and personally escorted him to Mancini’s room.
Mancini didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. “What took you so long?” he said by way of greeting.
Gabe looked around, taking in the surroundings in the blink of an eye, maybe two. It was a nice place, nothing like a standard VA facility. With the exception of some basic hospital equipment, it could have passed for a four-star hotel room.
“Pixie didn’t want to give you up.”
Mancini smiled. “She’s a romantic at heart. I knew she’d give in eventually.”
“You and her, huh?”
“Yeah, she’s the real deal,” he laughed. “I didn’t see it coming, which is kind of embarrassing, given what I do. But you didn’t come to talk to me about that. Want a drink?”
Without waiting for an answer, Mancini maneuvered his wheelchair over to a desk, opened a deep drawer, and extracted a bottle and two glasses.
“Are you supposed to be drinking?”
“No, but it helps.” He poured them both a few fingers. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? Virginia turning out to be Tenebris. I didn’t see that one coming, either. Pix says it’s because I’m sexist.” He chuckled. “I think it means it’s time for me to retire.”
“I’m trying to find her. Nobody will tell me a goddamn thing.”
“It’s protocol. The mission’s over. Everything’s been scrubbed or swept under the rug. Why do you want to find her?”
That was a question Gabe had been asking himself, too. “Because I have to.”
Mancini inclined his head and considered him thoughtfully. “You want to know why she threw away ten years to save your sorry ass.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Mancini turned back to the desk, opened a smaller drawer, and extracted a thumb drive which he held out to Gabe.
“What’s this?”
“Everything I was able to dig up on Virginia Miller. It’s not much, but it’s the most you’re going to find. Pixie deleted everything else from the server.”
“Why would you do this?”
Mancini smiled. “Because deep down, maybe I’m a little bit of a romantic, too. Hey, for whatever it’s worth, man, good luck.”
Offering his thanks, Gabe took the drive and made the trip home in record time. He spent the next several days pouring through the files. There was just enough truth peppered among the lies to make it believable, but it was impossible to determine how much of it was Virginia’s truth and how much had been borrowed from others.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“Fred, how do you feel about a road trip?”
Over the next several weeks, he and Fred visited the neighborhood where Virginia had supposedly grown up and asked around. Some
people vaguely remembered a young girl adopted by a local family who might have been named Virginia—though it could have been Valerie or Victoria—who’d lived there for a short time, but the family had been quiet and private and kept to themselves.
He checked out a half dozen German Shepherd breeders who raised and trained dogs for police and military service. Only two had been active and operational during the time Virginia was a kid. One older guy did remember a kennel owner who had given all his dogs exclusively German names, but didn’t know about any children and the breeder had been dead for more than thirty years.
He wasn’t even certain that his Virginia was the same woman who’d married Robert Miller. The Las Vegas preacher who’d officiated the small ceremony said the woman in the photos Gabe showed him might have been her, but he couldn’t say for sure, he’d performed so many, and it had been so long ago.
By the time Gabe returned to his cabin, the only thing he knew was that everything he thought he’d known was wrong.
Well, not everything. The details—the whats and wheres—of her past might not be accurate, but the pain he’d glimpsed in her eyes had been very real. She had been hurt by Darius Kristikos, hurt badly enough to become someone else and spend more than a decade trying to get close enough to bring him down. And she’d thrown it all away to save him before disappearing.
That’s what stayed with him. What gnawed at him day and night.
It would have been so easy for her to walk away. To achieve the objective she had been working toward for ten fucking years. In the end, neither one of them had succeeded. Christos was dead and the likelihood that Darius would ever pay for his sins was gone with it.
He wasn’t sure he even cared anymore.
“Where are you, Virginia?” he whispered into the silence. “Who are you?”
Fred nuzzled his hand at the mention of her name. He missed her, too.
The hair at the back of his neck prickled, letting him know he wasn’t alone.
“What the fuck do you want?” Gabe said without turning around.
“Nice to see you, too, Saint.”
Fucking Silas. “Where the fuck were you, Si? Why didn’t you return any of my calls?”
“There was a situation.”
Gabe’s response was a grunt. Yeah, he bet there was. Something always warranted the attention of Homeland Security, and the post-mission inquiries of a former SEAL commander didn’t register on the priority list. Especially when his mission had gone full FUBAR.
“You don’t watch the news much, do you?”
Another grunt. The only news Gabe was interested in wouldn’t be coming through the satellite feed of major networks. He couldn’t care less about what was happening in the world.
“Darius Kristikos is dead.”
Except that. “What?”
“His body was found floating off the coast of his private island in Greece.”
A tingle started at the base of Gabe’s spine and worked upward. “It’s him? Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“What happened?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Silas mused. “After Christos’s death, Darius retreated to his island and cut off all communication with the outside world to grieve. Or, at least that’s what we believed. Security cameras in the Korfos airport captured this shortly before the body was discovered. Remind you of anyone?”
Gabe looked at the image Silas held out to him. It was a partial shot, blown up, not very clear. A woman with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing sunglasses and a sundress looking every bit the typical tourist. But he recognized the curve of her neck, the one he had kissed and nibbled so thoroughly. Recognized the determined set of that stubborn jaw.
His heart began to pound and blood thundered in his veins. It was Virginia. She was alive. She’d done it. She’d done the impossible. She’d taken out Darius Kristikos.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Silas said, amusement coloring his voice. “The flight manifest identified her as Vivian Michaels.”
Vivian Michaels.
“Where is she now?”
Silas’s face sobered. “That, we don’t know. She never actually boarded the plane. We think—I think—this picture, the name, was a message. For you.”
“A message for me,” Gabe echoed.
“She’s too good at what she does to allow herself to be captured on camera unless she wants to be.”
“Did you know?” Gabe asked.
“That Virginia Miller was Tenebris? No. No one knew that.”
Someone knew. That level of immersion didn’t happen in a vacuum.
“What happens now, Silas? And don’t give me that bullshit about need to know. I need to know.”
“Darius’s unexpected demise has left a big hole. There’s a lot of scrambling and confusion with people trying to fill it.”
“And you’re going to take advantage of that.”
Silas grinned. “You bet your hairy frog ass we are. If you ever want in, give me a call.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got a mission of my own.”
“Thought you might say that. For what it’s worth, good luck.”
“Thanks, Si.”
After Silas left, Gabe felt a renewed sense of purpose. Virginia had survived. She’d taken out Darius. And she’d wanted him to know.
The knowledge gave him hope. That sense of purpose that had been flagging sparked back to life. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. Now the real mission began.
And he knew just who to call to get started.
Chapter Forty-One
Gabriel
“Iceman.”
“Saint,” Kane rumbled into the phone.
“I was thinking those mountains of yours might be a fine place to do some hunting and fishing this time of year.”
“That they are.”
“Interested?”
Kane hesitated only a moment, picking up on what Gabe was asking without words. “Hell, yes. Bet my brothers would be, too.”
“The more, the merrier.” And it was. Kane Callaghan was damn good. Kane Callaghan and his brothers? Unstoppable.
“When?”
“The sooner, the better.”
A few days later, Gabe found himself in the Callaghan family compound. Unlike his own sparse, utilitarian cabin, Kane’s place was warm and homey, with framed photos on the mantel and child-drawn pictures on the fridge. Reconciling those with the man he’d known and had the honor of serving with took some doing. Oh, Kane was still the hard-ass he’d always been, but there was an inner peace in the Iceman’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. It was nice to think his friend had found his happy ending. And maybe, just maybe, it gave him some hope, too.
Kane’s brothers, or at least some of them, were already there when he arrived. Jake, Gabe knew, having crossed paths with him once or twice over the years. Ian, he’d heard of. The guy’s digital skills were legendary. Sean, he’d never met before, but he had the same aura of barely leashed power and aggression Gabe understood so well. The three other Callaghan brothers—Michael, Shane, and Kieran—weren’t there, Kane explained, but were willing and available if the situation warranted it.
They shared the same big builds. The same blue-black hair, some dusted with silver, like his own. The same sharp, assessing, blue eyes. They might not have been career military like he was, but they were kindred spirits. They understood.
Kane’s wife and daughter were spending a few days with family down in the nearby community of Pine Ridge, so it was just the guys. They weren’t big on formalities, which Gabe appreciated. Introductions were made over steaks and cold beer, and Gabe gave them a high-level version of the events of the last few months.
“I heard Crash was all respectable now,” Jake said with a grin. He was nearly as big as Kane and slightly more talkative. “But DHS? What the hell is he thinking?”
“Sucks about Kristikos, though,” Ian added with a devilish glint in
his eye. “I wouldn’t have minded offing the bastard myself.”
Gabe agreed with both of them.
“So, what do you need?” Kane asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter. Gabe wasn’t offended; that was just the way Kane was. As nice as it was to hang out with the guys and shoot the shit, this visit wasn’t about that and they all knew it.
Gabe exhaled and told them about Virginia. They listened quietly, occasionally exchanging looks between them. When he finished, no one said anything for several long minutes.
Gabe prepared himself to hear what his own mind had been telling him: that he was an idiot. That he’d made things personal when they were just business. That attempting to find Virginia was a pointless and stupid endeavor.
They didn’t say any of those things, though.
When he looked back up and met each of their gazes, he saw neither pity nor censure, but empathy and complete understanding.
“Hey, man, we get it,” Jake confirmed. “We’ve all been there. You don’t see it coming. It’s like a sniper shot, out of nowhere and right between the eyes.”
“Does this sound familiar to anyone?” Ian said, sitting back. “A woman who doesn’t exist except for an occasional, sporadic footprint? Seamless assumption of alternate identities? Complete and total immersion?”
“Fuck me,” Sean said on an exhale, jumping to his feet and leaving the room. It was the first time he’d spoken.
The brothers exchanged glances but said nothing. A fire crackled in the hearth, adding to the barely-audible, low-level hum of kitchen appliances. They, apparently, understood the significance of what Ian had said, but whatever epiphany Sean Callaghan had had went right over Gabe’s head. He waited for an explanation, but the silence continued.
He met Kane’s eyes, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they knew something he didn’t. Kane shook his head slightly, a silent warning. Gabe clamped his lips shut and resisted the urge to demand an answer. He had been the one to come here and ask for help, so he would have to wait.
A few minutes later, Sean returned, once again cool and impassive, his expression giving nothing away. Gabe, however, felt like he was going to lose his fucking mind if someone didn’t start saying something.
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