Black Jack

by Lora Leigh

  “Well, it’s bloody damned time you remembered us, bitch.” The bright smile, dark brown eyes, and easy affection on the other woman’s face at least gave her a measure of hope that she hadn’t stepped from the frying pan into the fire.

  Lilly sighed heavily. “I’m going to assume I know you. And I’ll assume I’ve not just fried my ass by calling. But could you please at least give me your name?”

  The other woman’s wide, almond-shaped eyes became wider, gleaming with concern as she shot Lilly a quick look.

  “Raisa McTavish,” she introduced herself. “Code name Raven. We’ve been waiting for your call. I assumed all your memories had returned when you contacted Shea.”

  Lilly shook her head before checking behind them quickly.

  “We’re not being followed,” Raisa assured her. “Besides, Nissa is behind us a fair ways to ensure no one even tries. So, what made you desperate enough to remember the number if you haven’t remembered us yet?”

  Lilly pressed her fingers to her forehead and fought the pain building there. “I have no clue. I haven’t been able to contact Travis and things were getting a bit insane in the Harrington household.”

  Raisa gave a light laugh. “Your mother is such a witch. I never understood how a person as compassionate as you actually came from the same genes.”

  “Perhaps Father diluted them.” The pain was beginning to build. Lilly had never seen her mother as an evil person until now.

  “Well, your father was definitely a hunk,” Raisa purred. “For his age, he was damned fine-looking. It was a shame he died. You once said he taught you most of what you knew.”

  “He was a good man.” He would have never betrayed his children. Never would he have suggested for a second that Lilly be committed for opposing him, or for seeing Travis. He would have raged, given her the cold shoulder, perhaps disowned her. But something so cruel as to have her placed in an asylum? He would never have done such a thing.

  “So what’s the wicked witch of the Thames up to?” Raisa continued good-naturedly. “I imagine she’s screaming bloody raging murder over your association with Travis.”

  Lilly shook her head as she swallowed against the pain building in her head. “She’s not raging. She’s trying to have me committed instead.”

  Silence filled the car. Several more turns were made before Raisa blew out a hard breath. “Do you remember your cousin Elizabeth? She was committed just after your death.”

  Lilly lifted her head and stared back at the other girl, horrified. “Elizabeth was a child.”

  “Fourteen when your aunt and Angelica went against her father to have her committed for claiming her brother’s wife had tried to touch her. She was in Ridgemore’s establishment for over a month before you managed to find a way to get in to check on her but you couldn’t get her out. They had her for two years before she was released. She hasn’t been the same since, you told me once. You secretly checked on her often.”

  Her cousin Beth? Little Elizabeth, who had been such a gentle, sweet child. A vague disassociated memory eased through her mind then. Little Beth, medicated, staring at Lilly vacantly. How she had wished she could have helped her.

  Lilly swallowed back the bile rising in her throat. She shouldn’t be so shocked, she thought. Perhaps a part of her had always known how her mother was. That was why she had been so close to her father. He had protected her against her mother’s rages when she was much younger.

  Lilly wanted to wipe the image of Beth out of her mind, but it refused to leave. She had slipped into the clinic and tried to speak to her cousin. She remembered that. She had sat with the girl, whispered her name, and Beth had stared unseeingly at the wall.

  When Lilly had turned her face to stare into her pretty brown eyes, a single tear had run down Beth’s cheek.

  She had been placed in the clinic because the bitch her brother had married had tried to molest her, and Lilly remembered that she hadn’t doubted it was the truth.

  Lilly had known the woman Beth’s brother had married. She had been a perverted little tramp who hid behind polite smiles and innocent protests. She had done as her parents wished to their faces, and behind their backs had lived a life that would have given her father a stroke and her mother a nervous breakdown.

  Lilly reached up and rubbed at her head. The headache was growing progressively worse, each new memory, no matter how slight, sending shards of pain ripping through her head.

  “Where’s Travis?” she finally forced herself to ask. “I’ve been calling his cell for days.”

  “Travis is OTC,” Raisa stated as they pulled into a winding gravel road. “He was called out the other day. He contacted us when he left and we’ve been on watch since. We didn’t expect you to call, though.”

  “On watch?” Lilly asked, shaking her head. “Why you? What about the team he’s with?” And she knew there was a team.

  Raisa frowned at her. “Do you remember anything?”

  She shook her head. “Bits and pieces.”

  “Damn. That sucks,” Raisa murmured sympathetically. “That’s okay, darling. You’re back with your sisters now. We’re here to help. And ‘on watch’ means we were watching the house at night, keeping our eyes open for any bad guys that might be coming your way and following up leads on who blew up those lovely cycles Shea souped up for you. She’s rather upset over that. Said she was castrating the bastard who did it the moment she knew who it was. Travis’s team has been watching out for you as well, but Travis knew we wanted to be a part of this.”

  A face flashed in her mind. Long blond hair, dark blue eyes, a sad face, a melancholy air. Someone who had been horribly hurt. She had cried once in the dark. She had whispered someone’s name over and over again. Shea. Shea Tamallen.

  Lilly shook her head, grimacing at the increased ache in her head. It was becoming agonizing. The pain in her temples was beginning to radiate through the rest of her head.

  “Here we are. Home sweet home.” The Taurus pulled up in front of a charming two-story farmhouse. Rosebushes grew along the side of the wraparound porch while tall oaks and pines sheltered the house on three sides.

  “Nice,” she whispered, forcing the words past her numb lips.

  “Let’s get inside, see what’s up with your mother.” Raisa opened the door and jumped out. “Come on, we have something for that headache too. I know it has to be a bitch—your face is nearly white.”

  Lilly stepped slowly from the car.

  She knew where she was. She remembered the house. She had been here before. She had hidden here before. It was a safe house, but for what?

  “Come on, Night Hawk, let’s get you all better.” Raisa steadied her by gripping her elbow and leading her to the house.

  God, she needed Travis. She needed to know what the hell was going on and she needed a sense of balance. She could trust him. She might want to trust the overly cheerful, willful woman leading her to the steps, but she had no idea if she could.

  She knew Travis would protect her. Right now, she didn’t have a chance in hell of protecting herself.

  The front door opened and two other women stepped out. They all ranged between the ages of twenty-six to perhaps twenty-eight. They stared at her with eyes that were too knowing, too filled with secrets and shadows.

  They were her sisters. Not by blood, but by war. And they had a pact.

  Travis stepped off the plane to see the black SUV that pulled up on the darkened tarmac. As the vehicle came to a stop, Jordan stepped out of the driver’s side and watched silently as he moved across the distance to the vehicle.

  “We have a problem.” Travis threw his pack into the back of the vehicle and turned to face Jordan.

  “What kind of a problem?” His stomach was clenched, a sense of foreboding raging through him as he stared back at his commander. />
  “Lilly’s disappeared. She left the estate twelve hours ago and hasn’t been seen since. Her family is searching for her, but no authorities have been called in as of yet. Santos and Rhiannon are screaming at Command to pull in unit four to find her, and Command is refusing to answer the summons.”

  Travis froze. “What do you mean, missing?”

  “She walked out of the house and disappeared. The last time she was seen she was arguing with her mother over you. Wild Card was in house at the time and reports Angelica has made arrangements to have Lilly committed to an asylum in the south of France because of her refusal to stop seeing you.”

  “Fucking bloody bitch!” Travis quickly circled the vehicle and jumped in on the passenger side as Jordan put it into gear. “Any leads?”

  “All we know is that her family hasn’t found her,” Jordan reported. “Things went from bad to worse real fucking fast, Travis. We’ve contacted Senator Stanton but he’s refusing to give us any information on any damned thing. Command is silent. The only response Santos and Rhiannon have had is to take care of their own house-cleaning. And I’ll be damned if I like the sound of that.”

  “Have you heard from Elite Two?”

  Travis needed his cell phone. The sat phone had been damaged just after arriving in England. Lilly would have called.

  “MIA,” Jordan responded. “They can’t be found.”

  “That’s not unusual.” Travis stared straight ahead, forcing himself to be patient until he could retrieve the cell phone. Lilly would have left a message. He knew she would.

  “Give me a break here, Travis,” Jordan grunted. “I’m not Santos. I know how close this unit is to those girls. You know where they are, and I bet you anything they know where Lilly is. Thing is, if she doesn’t contact myself or her commanders soon, if she doesn’t make the right moves, then her mother will have the power to get her committed, just as she wants to do. She’s already making arrangements to have the case heard in England. And we both know how that goes.”

  “She’ll make contact,” Travis informed him. “I need a cycle and a communications helmet as well as my cell phone. Keep Santos and Rhiannon in the dark until I find out what the hell happened. I don’t want to spook Lilly or the girls.”

  Travis shook his head. “The girls are watching her, Jordan. If they had her they would have contacted.”

  Jordan shot him a surprised look. “You’re certain?”

  “I’m positive.”

  There was a chance she had made it to the safe house she owned. He would look there after contacting the girls and learning what they might know. He was praying they were with her.

  “Wild Card didn’t follow her when she left?” he asked.

  “No one knew she was gone until it was too late.” Jordan shook his head. “We have a serious situation here, Travis. An Elite Op on the run, her memories compromised, her ability to protect herself hindered.” His voice became angrier. “And didn’t I warn those fucking fools this would happen? The minute Lilly stepped out of line, her mother was ready to ship her ass to Ridgemore. Exactly where we can’t risk her being.”

  The drugs and advanced shock therapy Ridgemore would use could possibly destroy Lilly. The psychiatric drugs Ridgemore was known for could be disastrous.

  It was a problem Jordan had indeed warned Elite Command of. Angelica Harrington’s circle of friends knew only one way to deal with children determined to lead their own lives. That was by enforcing their wishes through restraint and drugs.

  It was no damned wonder those same kids were becoming drug addicts, and many of them were eventually taking their own lives.

  “I’ll find her.” He would find her, or there would be hell to pay.

  Chapter 16

  “travis gathered most of the information over the past few months.” Raisa spread the hard-copy files and maps out on the long kitchen table two days after Lilly had arrived.

  Lilly had spent most of her time at the farmhouse sleeping. The headaches were bad; the shots Shea had given her had barely touched them. It had taken the medic more than twenty-four hours to find a combination of medications that would help and to acquire them.

  She was finally headache-free, though, and able to figure out exactly what was happening to her, and to her life.

  “Here’s what he’s been working on.” Raisa drew her attention back to the table. “This is the warehouse where you were shot six months ago.” She pointed to the top of a warehouse across from another unmarked warehouse. “You were parked here.” She pointed to the Land Rover parked between the two warehouses. “The shot was fired perfectly, but you turned at the last second. That’s all on video but we can’t access the video file from here yet.”

  “We’re still uncertain why you were targeted or by who.” Nissa Farren, the communications whiz kid of the group, turned from her equipment to look at the rest of them. “Travis has been running down leads the past few days—that’s why he’s not here. We didn’t expect your mother to try to have you committed. But never fear, Black Jack will take care of everything.”

  Black Jack. His code name. She was Night Hawk. She was part of a group of women trained to provide backup and distraction on missions conducted by the male counterparts of an elite covert operations group. The name of which the other women still refused to give her.

  “It seems Black Jack can take care of everything,” she murmured.

  “Travis and the others are our big brothers,” Shea Tamallan said, her smile somber as she looked at Lilly. “They’ve always watched over us, along with Santos.”

  “And Rhiannon?” she asked. “What about her?”

  Nissa shrugged. “Rhiannon is harder to figure out. I’ve been working with her for a few months longer than you were with us. None of us have ever figured her out. She’s very compassionate, but she’s also very by-the-book. It makes it harder to work with her.”

  “She would have never approved our deployment,” Shea stated. “She and Santos argue often over us, and the missions we’re given. They didn’t want you returned to your family, but Elite Command needed you for this mission.”

  “How nice,” she murmured. “But Santos has always watched over us, right?”

  “It’s hard to explain without telling you more than we should,” Raisa stated soberly. “We have to be careful, Lilly. And you especially have to be careful. If there’s the least suspicion that you know as much as you do, then Elite Command will have no choice but to order your death. They can’t afford the risk to the other agents.”

  There was a lot of information she still didn’t have, but she had acquired much information in recent days. She knew she had been specifically trained to work with a certain group of agents. A group Travis was a part of. The call-girl cover had been created to keep them above suspicion as agents, and the troublemaking personas were intended to allow them to move freely as needed and to lend them an air of danger that made it logical for them to be in the company of the agents they were trained to provide backup for.

  “What information do we have, if any, on the latest attempt?” Lilly asked.

  “We have the explosives cap and the fluid,” Raisa said. “Both of which were used in the bomb makeup and have been used before. Surprisingly enough, your father was tracking the maker of that bomb before he died. It’s the same bomb tied to an explosion at one of his offices four months before his death.”

  Lilly nodded. “I remember that. It happened around four in the morning, so no one was hurt, thank God, but we never did find out who was behind it. We couldn’t even figure out why they would have wanted to do it.” She shook her head. “it’s just an office building. There was nothing to be gained from blowing it up.” A frown creased her brow. “So whoever blew up Father’s office in London used the same bomb to try and blow me up here in Maryland?”

  Shea sh
rugged. “We’re hoping that Travis’s trip to England will shed some light on all of this,” she told her. “We need to wrap this up, hopefully—in Santos and Rhiannon’s opinion—before you remember anything about the six missing years. They truly wanted you to have the chance to return to the family you missed so desperately once they were ordered to allow it, Lilly. We all wanted that for you.”

  Because they had all lost so much as well. Family, friends, careers, and lives, as they continued to fight for a world that didn’t give a damn about them.

  Lilly turned away from the table and paced over to the window. “When does Travis return?”

  “We believe he flew in before dawn this morning. He’ll be debriefed on his mission, which normally takes close to twelve hours, then Jordan should release him. He’ll come looking for you.”

  “Does he know where I am?”

  Shea nodded. “I left a message on his cell phone. I asked him to call with an update, which isn’t unusual in itself.”

  She gripped the phone in the pocket of the light hoodie she wore. The girls had made her turn it off, telling her that she could be tracked if it was active. It was how they had found her. She knew they were telling the truth, but . . .

  But if Travis did call her, she wouldn’t know it. Wouldn’t be able to hear his voice.

  She raked her fingers through her hair and turned to the window again. Waiting. Watching.

  Travis hadn’t called Shea yet. Why hadn’t he called?

  “You know, it’s so odd to see you without those Glocks you wear on your thighs.” Nissa gave a light laugh as Lilly ran her hand to her thigh. “Would you like to have them?”

  Lilly turned to her. “You have them?”

  Her smile was wide, bright. “We have some of your things here. We brought them just in case you needed them.”

  Nissa rose from her chair and motioned Lilly to the back of the house. The bedroom she went into was the one she shared with Shea. The two half-beds were placed on opposite sides of the wall. One side of the room was neat as a pin. The other side, as though an invisible line ran through it, was a complete shambles.