Much too fortuitous, Rogue suspected.
They were classed as highly dangerous Tier One hits, which meant the team were to take them out with prejudice. No mercy. Rogue recalled every little detail of the operation.
“Eyes on the prize,” she had said, having climbed atop the cab of an old JCB that sat in the corner of a demolition company’s yard.
“Good line of sight,” others had reported back.
“Ready to engage.”
She waited for the go. Their targets were standing close together in the center of the untidy yard, surrounded by rusting machinery, coils of linked chains, and a jumbled mountain of hooks, buckets and other attachments that helped knock buildings down. She counted five locals, two important looking individuals wearing leather jackets and their bodyguards—and four visitors—the Londoners. Two were rough-looking gang members. She could tell by their tattoos. But the other two were different.
She focused in on them using her high-powered gun sight. One was a tall man wearing an ankle length black coat, the other was a young man clad in a black windbreaker and looking uneasy. She couldn’t see the tall man’s face. The top of the JCB’s cab wasn’t the easiest place to settle but Rogue had experienced worse in the last few years. An open sewer in Afghanistan came to mind, along with the rat-infested heap of garbage from where she had taken out a pair of human traffickers. The JCB was heaven compared to that.
The five locals faced the four visitors and began a debate. Their discussion was animated, sometimes loud. The locals did most of the talking. The two London gang members made a show of walking away, but the tall man stayed, almost as if he wanted to switch sides. Rogue remarked on it over the comms, but her words changed nothing. The team leader counted down the minutes and took orders from a remote HQ.
This was why Rogue preferred to work alone. Something was off with the scenario playing out below, but it seemed only she could see it. Maybe they could use it to future advantage? Maybe they could help someone in dire need? Maybe the tall man was being coerced?
The young man stayed close to him, too. Rogue was trained to read body language, and guessed this spoke of a family relationship. She was about to comment again when the attack order came through.
High-powered rifles reported loudly in the night. Two of the five locals went down, dead. A third stumbled and clutched his shoulder, trying to draw a gun before another bullet hit him square in the chest. Rogue placed a bullet between the shoulder blades of another gang member as they started to split and run. Then she was moving, jumping to the ground and rolling. Tall man and young man were loping along obliviously to her left, staying together. It was clear they were untrained and unhappy to be here. She keyed her comms system into life.
“Believe civilians are to the left. We taking them alive?”
The answer shocked her. “Negative. No loose ends.”
What the hell did that mean?
“No loose ends? They’re fucking civilians.”
It was insubordination, but Rogue’s anger, frustration and disbelief had built to boiling point. The team leader shut her down, remotely disabling her comms. She was left with two choices. Continue with the op or risk the rest of her team turning on her.
She ran into the fray. Confronted the last gang member. Leapt aside to evade a knife thrust and then caught his wrist as his handgun turned on her. She forced it up toward the sky, looked left to where the tall man and young man were practically cowering.
“Run,” she hissed. “I can’t help you.”
They hesitated a few more seconds. The handgun she was grappling for went off. The sound of the gunshot galvanized them into action. They ducked behind a pile of wooden pallets and then ran after the two remaining locals who were angling for a Portakabin. Rogue shook her head in exasperation even as her opponent booted her shins.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Swiftly, she broke his wrist, caught the gun on the way down, and aimed it at his own shin, firing twice. When he hit the floor, she put a bullet in the back of his head. Gang members—she could kill.
Her team were running after the civilians and locals, cutting the distance in half very quickly. One of the locals turned and opened fire, sending the team into cover. Stark lighting lit the area badly, just a few old, battered floodlights with most of their lamps burned out. The yard was littered with obstacles.
They converged on the Portakabin. Rogue didn’t need her comms to know it was going to be a full strike. The team took positions and made ready.
Shots came from the far window of the Portakabin, the last remaining local trying to ward them off.
She saw her team start moving, and dashed ahead, wanting to be in front of them. Anything to give the civilians a chance. She crossed the ground fast, staying low, gun concentrated on the windows. There was movement, a dark figure against the pane, but she refrained from firing. She struck the door hard, sending it slamming back against its hinges, and rolled inside.
There were three shapes, one of which would be the armed local. A shape turned aggressively toward her. Rogue didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
But it wasn’t the local she killed. It was the young man wearing the windbreaker. In that split second, he’d moved to protect the tall man. The local was busy on his knees in the corner, pulling sticks of C4 wrapped around a detonator out of a safe. Rogue saw the way the young man fell, knew he was dead. She saw the look of horror that flashed across the tall man’s face and thought: That’s his father...
In trying to protect them she had put herself in the worst position imaginable.
She raised a hand toward the father, a man she later discovered was called Miller, not sure what she was trying to do. He glared, distraught, face cracking even as she watched. He set his eyes on her and screamed, “I will kill you. I will get you for this. You remember! I will kill you for this.”
At that moment the local with the C4 flung the entire duct-tape-wrapped package in her direction.
“Stay!” he yelled at her. “Stay, or I blow us all to hell!”
He brandished a cellphone in one hand, still holding the gun in the other.
Rogue froze, waving a hand at the open door to her left to warn the rest of her team. She could hear the team leader on the comms, the cynical side of her wondering if he was asking whether he should let her explode or not. The local exited through a back door and, after a few moments, the tall man followed. Rogue backed slowly out of the Portakabin.
“C4,” she told the nearest man. “Move away now.”
Fifteen seconds after she exited the cabin, it exploded, a sheet of fire detonating in all directions and shooting up into the night. The sound of the explosion rolled across her, dominating her senses. Rogue was already on her knees and felt a piece of shrapnel strike her spine. It knocked her flat on her face. A wave of heat rushed over her and then came the sound of debris falling and the hope that something serious didn’t land on her.
She took a whole minute to look up.
Her team were down. Most were okay, just cut and bruised, but a man she didn’t know had lost an arm. Her own spine was bruised for days, making her walk with a limp. And when she looked back at the Portakabin, she saw a red-hot burning mass of flame. The local and the tall man had escaped.
But inside all that, she saw with her mind’s eye the young man she’d shot dead. The tall man’s son. She saw him burning.
It modified her thinking and, days later, it made her run. It was almost the final straw. The horror that finally decided her was when she returned from the Miller mission to the staging area to find the kids all gone.
“What happened?” she asked the team leader. “Where did they go?”
Not an ounce of emotion crossed his face. “Already shipped out.”
She fixed him with a look of pure anger. “No way. No fucking way. You tell me what’s going on right now.”
Her hand tightened on her gun, knuckles white. The team leader saw it and raised hi
s weapon. “Stand down, Rogue,” he’d said. “And learn your place in the chain of command. If I say they’re shipped out—they’re shipped out. If I say they’re in Disneyland—they’re in Disneyland. Got it?”
With an effort she backed off. Nodding, she indicated their transport. “I thought they were headed to England, that’s all. With us.”
“They were redirected.”
It was a bland, ominous statement and it struck her as hard as a punch to the throat. Redirected for whom? These shadowy Three Old Men? Some cabal? It proved to her that MI6 and her unit was indeed occasionally used by an entity known as the Hellfire Club.
Now, the sun was setting outside the window as Carrie placed her micro meal on a tray and ate in a perfunctory manner. Sunset and encroaching darkness threw shadows and random patterns across her face. She drained the water bottle and grabbed the whiskey.
She lit up a joint, inhaled deeply, and lay back. It was time to think.
As darkness claimed the onrushing night, she sat without moving, allowing her senses some respite, switching off. Noise filtered in from outside, people shouting and raucous vehicle engines, the sirens of a cop car. Someone she didn’t know dragged a chair across the floor of the apartment above. Attuned with her environment, she drifted away.
The unfortunate incident with Jacob Anderson proved she’d never be free but at the same time it showed that she hadn’t lost a step. She’d been attentive, both reactive and proactive. She’d been deadly. Poor old Jacob had almost been rendered blind and, quite possibly, dead. The two mothers had eventually walked away, uninterested. On the whole she thought she’d managed to save the situation and, thus, her place here in Cocoa Beach. But was it only a matter of time before Miller or the Hellfire Club came calling? Before they sent their own, or even genuine MI6 agents acting under orders, to take her out?
It was a light scraping noise, but it raised the hairs on the back of her neck. It was foreign, alien to the environment she surrounded herself with every single night. She was instantly on her feet, berating herself for allowing Jacob to live, wondering if she had indeed lost several steps by not already uncovering her go-bag and making plans to quit Florida.
Another scrape came from her front door. Someone was out in the corridor, picking the lock. She could have run, but Carrie didn’t run. She confronted everything head on.
When the lock wouldn’t give—being a superior deadbolt—the operative outside switched to another tool. Carrie’s steps were soundless as she moved to an advantageous position. She had weapons, but they were in the bedroom, and she wanted to see what she was dealing with before grabbing a makeshift bludgeon. In seconds she heard the whirr of a tiny drill and knew she was up against a professional.
Swiftly and silently she disengaged the metal bar, allowing her new adversary to gain an easier entry. It would put them at a disadvantage.
The door cracked open a millimeter and stopped. The interloper was listening hard. Carrie berated herself for not leaving the TV playing to itself, which would have been a smarter move.
The door opened wider. She waited behind it, muscles coiled. A moment later her head was rocked as the door smashed back into her face. Carrie fought through the pain, shocked at how shrewd her adversary was. The figure kicked out, sending the door once more toward her. Carrie stopped it with an arm and then flitted into the open.
The figure wore a mask, was well built, and clearly capable. Under the mask the mouth moved as a hand came up. The figure appeared to be warning her, or perhaps asking her to hold off for a second but Carrie didn’t comply. She attacked, knowing this wasn’t an innocent attempt to attract her attention like Jacob, earlier.
A jab and then an elbow to the temple. A rising knee to the groin. She pushed at his chest, sending him staggering backward, then leapt off the ground, coming down with an elbow that struck directly on top of his head.
At the same time, she side-kicked the door shut. It wouldn’t do to let the neighbors watch, and would make any backup’s entry harder.
The man was holding his head, but coiled, ready to attack. She could see it in his stance, in every muscle that showed through his tight T-shirt. His frame was powerful. She couldn’t let him gain the upper hand. She struck again. He fended off blows, backing away. In seconds he came up against the rear wall of the apartment, pinned there. She didn’t relent, just pressed forward with powerful jabs and crosses aimed for nerve clusters or weak points, and then a kick or an elbow, a feint and then a headbutt as she came in close.
He blocked everything, stopped the butt on top of his own skull, an action that made her see stars. There was a sharp rap on the back wall, a neighbor complaining, followed by an angry shout.
She backed away two steps, breathing easily, watching him. Danger surrounded her, but she’d bloody well missed all this. The moment he moved she would spring.
Then he spoke the one word that completely blew her mind. “Rogue.”
She blinked, shaking her head. Nobody could know that name. Not here. Not after all this time. His voice, though muffled by the mask, sounded a little familiar. She caught herself in the midst of shock and snapped out of it.
“How do you know that name?” There was no point feigning ignorance.
“Because I know you.”
The man pulled the mask off. Carrie tensed for an attack but the face she saw sent fresh tremors of astonishment through her.
“Tom? What the fuck are you doing here? And why are you wearing a mask?”
“I’m here to talk. To help. To—”
“Why did you attack me? How did you find me?”
“Seriously? I never lost you. The mask is in case you had company. And I was trying to stop your attack. I fought back, that’s all. Rogue, you were too important to lose track of.”
“Stop saying that name. That’s not me anymore.”
She turned her back, conscious of the trust she was giving him by the gesture. She walked away, still listening for any sudden moves. If there was one person she trusted in this world it was Tom Freeman.
“Ro... um, I mean Carrie. Please hear me out.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about my new life?”
“No. I’ve been watching.”
“And you knew I’d attack you, didn’t you? From behind that door?”
“We had the same training.”
Carrie saw that as a new concern. She’d been trained at MI6, so they’d know her routines, her go-to methods. She should have been using these last two years to adapt and develop new combat skills, rather than pounding asphalt and lifting weights.
A dark thought loomed.
“Does anyone else know where I am? The Hellfire Club would send men to kill me if they knew. It could even be you.”
Now Tom looked affronted. “You take me for an idiot? Of course not. And you know damn well I could never hurt you.”
“Good. Now get the hell out of my apartment and forget where I live. I don’t want to know you. The last time we talked, you didn’t even believe the Hellfire Club was real.”
“Well, now I do. I’ve struggled with it for years. I didn’t want to believe it back then.”
“Oh, so I’m not spouting nonsense anymore?”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I couldn’t believe MI6 had been infiltrated by something called the Hellfire Club. I saw the signs but...” He paused. “Nobody else believed you either. I’m sorry I lost you.”
“Just get out,” she said. “You had your chance to join me two years ago when I left.”
“But Carrie. You’re the only person I can trust with this. It’s related to our shared past, to why you left. There’s no one on the inside I can talk to. This is important. You have to—”
She turned on him, auburn hair whipping around her face as she spun. “I am important. Me, personally. I spent too many years being told and trained otherwise. Trained to work as a team, as a number. I left that old life on purpose, Tom. This is my new life and I’m the biggest part
of it.”
“This?” He indicated the whiskey, the still smoking joint, and the tiny apartment. “This is not you, Carrie. You’re a wild animal in a cage.”
“How do you know?” she snapped back, throat raw and voice grating. “How do you know who I really am? If I’m in a cage, it’s purpose built. I’m running, hiding. From the Club, and Miller. What other choice do I have?”
“I know you. I knew what made you angry. What made you attack, Carrie?” He moved forward. “I knew what made you kill and... what made you horny.”
She blushed more than she wanted to. “Shut up. You’re old news. Don’t flatter yourself. I have a new life now. You can’t come here and try to change it just because you finally accept everything I said two years ago.”
Tom shook his head. “I don’t think you do have a new life.”
She took a moment to study him. In addition to being well-built and finely muscled, Tom had black eyes almost as deep as hers and short black hair. He sported dark bristle across his chin and cheeks and a scar over the top of his right eye. She knew the origin of that scar.
And dozens more.
She knew about the birthmark in the small of his back. She knew he had a habit of grinding his teeth and that, when he smiled properly, his entire face got involved. Not just his lips or his eyes. Tom grinned like a pro.
She softened, half hoping he would smile right now. But his dark eyes were full of concern and something else.
Fear? Or desperation?
It made her back away. “Two years,” she said. “Two years I’ve been free. Alone, but happy. Two years without killing innocents. Without helping those old bastards line their pockets. I’m safe here, and free for the first time I can remember. I don’t want to hear it. Get out before I throw you out.”
“This isn’t you, Carrie. Shit, Carrie isn’t you.”
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