by Lara Adrian
A chill swept over her when she realized what John was holding. “Is that some kind of tracking device?”
“I found it on your car. Then I had a vision of some asshole holding a gun against your head.”
Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget the whole ESP thing either.
She swallowed hard, eyeing the dead man in the ditch. “You’re saying this guy followed me here to kill me?”
“I had the same vision,” Alec said, still looking grimly at John. “A week ago. I’ve been having a lot of visions lately.”
“You’re clairvoyant, too?”
Amazing how calmly she was able to ask that, given that before last night, she’d attributed claims of psychic abilities to people with overactive imaginations or a desperate need for attention. Neither John nor Alec fit those molds. For that matter, neither did her brother, if everything John told her last night about Kyle and the Phoenix program was true.
Which it certainly seemed to be, considering there was a corpse armed with a pistol lying three feet away and Kyle’s two best friends discussing the whole thing as if there was nothing strange about any of it.
“The tracker isn’t mine,” Alec said. “I followed Lisa here last night from Cinci. Been staked out in the woods all night, waiting to see what she was doing up here. And with whom. Now I know.”
“What about him?” John asked, ignoring the jab and cocking his head toward the ditch.
“He showed up a few minutes before you came crashing through the woods like an elephant on the charge. Lucky for you, I already had the son of a bitch in my sights.”
“More like convenient.” John’s tone and expression were filled with suspicion.
Alec scoffed. “This fucker would’ve killed you both if I hadn’t been here.”
“I wouldn’t have given him the chance,” John growled back. “How do I know you’re not part of the problem, too, Stingray? You working for the dark side since Phoenix went down?”
Alec gave a slight shrug. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Lisa couldn’t take the sudden overdose of testosterone rolling off the two men. And she also had about a thousand questions swarming in her head.
They started pouring out of her in a rapid stream. “Why would this guy want to kill me? Is it because of Kyle? Do you think he might’ve known where my brother is? Oh, God... do you think he might’ve killed Kyle, too?” She looked at Alec then. “And what do you mean you followed me here? Why would you do that? I haven’t seen or heard from you in years, so how do you even know where I live? You two need to tell me what the hell is going on, right fucking now.”
John’s narrow glare stayed rooted on his former comrade. “Yeah, Alec. You start. What the fuck are you doing creeping after Lisa?”
“I told you. Last week I had a vision that she was in danger. Didn’t think I could live with myself if I just sat back and let it happen, so I decided to check things out. She wasn’t hard to find through public records, the DMV.” Alec glanced to Lisa. “Once I had the info, I went to your place just to make sure you were okay. I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.”
“Spying on me?”
“I prefer to think of it as stealth body-guarding,” he said, some of the wry humor she knew him for edging his deep voice. “I didn’t want to scare you, and it was crucial that you continued to act naturally in case anyone else was watching, too.”
She thought back to the past couple of weeks, and to one instance in particular, when she’d come home from work and couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been there. No evidence at all to support it. Not a single thing out of place, but she just... knew. “Someone broke into my house last week. They must’ve spent some time nosing around in stealth mode, too. I suppose that was you?”
“No, ma’am,” Alec replied. He and John exchanged a look. “But if it was someone else...”
John blew out a curse. “Kyle texted her yesterday. Told her she needed to hide.”
Alec seemed surprised, and not pleased. “You’ve been in touch with your brother recently? Where is he? What else has he told you?”
She started to answer, but John did it for her. “We don’t know any of that yet. The communication cut off right after she got the text.”
Alec cursed, frowning as he considered. “I need to see her phone. It could be tapped. Or traced.”
“Already disabled it,” John said. His fist swallowed up the GPS tracker and he put it back in his pocket. “Obviously, she’s on the radar now. So is this mountain. Which means so am I.”
“It’s my fault,” Lisa murmured, hating that she was at the center of John’s problems. She was terrified for her brother’s wellbeing—her own as well, especially after realizing an armed assassin had come after her today—but that didn’t mean she had to put anyone else’s life in danger. “I shouldn’t have come here, John. I’m sorry. It’s not your problem to fix for me. I should go before anything worse happens.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, stepping closer and pulling her under his arm. “Not without me. Got it?”
The intimate gesture and softly worded order sent Alec’s brows up a degree, but he didn’t comment. “You both need to get out of here,” he advised soberly. “The sooner, the better.”
“Agreed,” John said. His muscled arm flexed around Lisa as he met her upturned gaze. “Alec and I need to dispose of the body and take care of some other business out here. Be ready to leave when I get back, all right?”
“Okay,” she murmured.
“Take this.” He put his pistol in her hand, his voice quiet and deadly serious. “Don’t be afraid to use it if anyone shows up at the cabin before I come back.”
She took the gun, catching his meaning as he curled her fingers around its grip. If she needed to use the weapon in the next few minutes, then very likely the only person who would be on the business end of it was Alec Colton.
8
Twenty minutes later, Duarte stood next to Alec on a narrow curve of mountain pass where they had driven Lisa’s car and parked it. The dead guy was in the trunk, his nine-millimeter pistol in Duarte’s safekeeping.
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” Alec said as they walked around to the back of the Camry to pull the body out.
Alec took the corpse’s feet, while Duarte grabbed the arms. “Sheppard warned us to cut all ties with our pasts, not to trust anyone—not even another Phoenix operative—if the program ever got compromised. That advice has kept me alive these past three years.”
“Same with me,” Alec said as they hoisted the dead weight out of the trunk and carried it around to the open driver’s side door. “Yet here I am, not killing you. Helping you. Trusting you, in fact.”
“Yeah.” Duarte grunted, watching the former Marine sniper with more than a little caution. “The question is, what for?”
“Semper fi and all that shit, I guess.”
After they positioned the dead man behind the wheel, Duarte stood back. “Go get the gas.”
Alec gave him a cautious look, but the cocky bastard had balls enough to grin at the same time. “You’re not gonna throw a match on me now, are you?”
“Not today.” Duarte smirked in spite of himself. “Semper fi and all that shit.”
Chuckling, Alec swaggered back to the trunk for the container of gasoline they’d brought along from the cabin. He opened the cap on the red plastic can and gave the Camry a good dousing, shaking some of the gas out inside the vehicle and onto the body as well. Once the can was empty, he tossed it in the backseat and came over to stand beside Duarte.
“So, you’ve been living up here this whole time, I take it?”
Duarte nodded. “You?”
“Got a place down near the beach in Miami.”
“Let me guess. One of those sleek high-rise condos with glass walls and ocean views for miles?”
It was no secret that Alec Colton came from money—very old, very established East Coast money—even if he was th
e unabashed black sheep of his well-heeled family. He’d joined the Marines soon after the Trade Center attack, just like Duarte and Kyle Becker had, but Alec had also admitted he’d done it to escape the yoke and disapproval of his family.
Now, there was no going back. None of the former Phoenix operatives could go back to what they’d once had.
“Nah, nothing like that,” Alec said. “That never was my style, man. I’m renting a sweet little Airstream in a trailer park a few blocks from the water. I keep my head down and my ear to the ground, online and otherwise.”
“What’s your cover down there? Doing anything for work?”
“I pick up the odd job here and there. Nobody to answer to, nobody telling me how to live my life, which is how I prefer things these days.” He paused for a long moment. “So... you and Lisa.”
“Yeah,” Duarte said. “Me and Lisa. Long story. Private one, and I’m not of a mind to get into it with you at the moment.”
Alec nodded slowly, studying him now. “You trust her, though?”
“I trust her.”
“Well, that’s good, because that dead guy we’re about to toast isn’t the last of her problems. Not the last of ours either, my friend.”
Duarte had a feeling he knew where Alec was heading with this. The same thing had been bugging him since they’d dragged the would-be assassin out of the ditch. “The pistol he was carrying—”
“Isn’t a SIG,” Alec finished. “It’s not the one I saw in my vision.”
Not the one Duarte had seen either. Which meant that whatever this man had intended by tracking Lisa up the mountain with a weapon drawn, even though he was now dead, her life was still in danger. The thought put a knot of fury and dread in Duarte’s chest. “I’m not going to let her get hurt. Anyone tries, and they’ll have to come through me first.”
“Even her brother?”
Duarte narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about him?”
“Like I said, I’ve been having a lot of visions lately. One of them involves Talon.”
“As in?”
“As in, him working with the bad guys. Giving them intel, using his ability to help them put hits out on other Phoenix operatives.” When Duarte cursed, Alec went on. “The vision first came to me a couple of months ago, but it was hazy. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.”
“Then maybe you were wrong. Hazy could mean you’re mistaken.”
“I’ve seen it a few times now, each one clearer than the last. Enough to know that it’s real.” Alec’s expression was as sober as his tone. “Once the premonitions started, I dug into Becker’s sister online, began keeping a covert eye on her from a distance, in case she might lead me to him. But nope. Not even a blip of activity on that front. Then, last week, I got the vision of her being held at gunpoint and I decided it was time to move in for a closer look.”
Duarte raked a hand over his jaw. He’d been having his own share of disturbing premonitions, too, but the news about Kyle Becker was difficult to reconcile.
None of the three of them was a saint, but Talon a traitor to Phoenix and his comrades? If that was true, it was going to devastate Lisa. And if it was true, then Duarte would have to take the double-crossing son of a bitch out personally. “You sure about all this?”
Alec nodded. “Wish I wasn’t, man, but I know what I saw. He’s working with Phoenix’s enemies. I would bet my life on it. I just don’t know where the son of a bitch is, or who’s calling the shots above him.”
“We need those answers,” Duarte murmured.
“Right. And now that Lisa’s heard from him, there’s a chance she can help us find them—”
“No fucking way.” A spear of possessiveness—of white-hot protectiveness—surged through him at the thought of using Lisa to prove, or disprove, her brother’s guilt. And Duarte wasn’t about to put her anywhere near the fallout, if Alec’s vision turned out to be true. “She stays out of this, you got that?”
Alec eyed him soberly and gave a mild shake of his head. “Like it or not, Ranger, she’s already in. You and I both know that. And sooner or later, before this is all done, she’s gonna have a SIG nine cocked and loaded up against her pretty head.”
The reminder chilled Duarte to the bone. It also solidified his resolve. “I’ll die before I let that happen.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that, my friend.”
“I need to take her someplace safe,” Duarte said. “I want to keep her close by while you and I figure out what’s going on with her brother. And then decide what we need to do about it.”
“Right,” Alec agreed. “As for where to go, I have some connections that may be able to help with a temporary safe house.”
“What kind of connections?”
“Trustworthy ones,” he said. “Let’s just say I have a business colleague who owes me a favor or two and won’t balk at being asked for payback. There won’t be any questions, and the place is guaranteed secure.”
“You talking military security?”
Alec smirked. “More or less.”
“Why do I get the feeling it’s much less?”
“Guess you’re just gonna have to trust me, Ranger.” The Marine comrade who’d had Duarte’s back since boot camp held his gaze now from under the fall of a shaggy mane of surfer dude waves. Crystal blue eyes held Duarte’s stare, measuring him, too. “Guess we’re both going to have to trust each other now.”
Duarte nodded, and suddenly it felt a bit like old times. Like being back in the platoon in the sandbox, preparing to head out on a combat mission.
Except this time, if Alec was right, the enemy on the other side of the wire could be one of their own. Duarte didn’t want to consider that possibility, but he was too jaded by war and betrayal to believe it could never happen.
And his years in the Phoenix program had taught him another thing, too. The visions never lie.
“Come on,” Duarte said. He took the GPS tracker out of his pocket and pitched it into the woods. Anyone else monitoring the signal would have to search a thousand acres of wilderness before they realized Lisa’s car was no longer attached to the beacon. “Let’s start the barbeque and get the fuck out of here.”
Leaning into Lisa’s open car, he put the transmission in neutral. Then he closed the door and together he and Alec went around behind the Camry and pushed it off the narrow dirt road and over the steep ledge.
9
They cleared out of the cabin and hit the road as soon as the guys returned. Leaving her car smoldering at the bottom of the cliff along with the gunman who’d come to find her, John explained that the diversion would likely only buy a day or two lead time before someone else came looking for her.
They needed to put miles between themselves and the cabin, and they needed to do it fast. John had packed a duffel with a change of clothes and some additional firearms. Lisa had the few things she brought with her from Cincinnati in her backpack.
With it likely that whoever was tracking Lisa now also had John on their radar, his old pickup would have been as useless to them as her car. Alec’s Jeep, parked down at the base of the mountain since he’d arrived last night, made for a cramped road trip option but they had few choices.
Lisa didn’t know precisely where she and her pair of grim companions were headed now. Before they left North Carolina, Alec had made a call to a friend who’d agreed to provide them with a temporary safe house somewhere. Now, as the sun began to set over I-95 South some eleven hours later, Lisa watched from the Wrangler’s small backseat as the highway signs indicated they were approaching Miami.
Alec exited the highway and drove through a maze of side streets and back alleys, skirting the tropical vibrancy of the downtown for a more industrial section of the city. The salty scent of the ocean and aromatic, spicy foods carried in through the Jeep’s open windows as they traveled deeper into Miami’s back channels.
Alec seemed to know the area well. He navigated with a sure hand, eventually rolling
the Jeep to a stop at a gated entrance to a large dock-front warehouse.
A mean-looking security guard came out of the small gate shack to approach. He was swarthy and thick-trunked, his dark brows furrowed over black-lensed sunglasses. At his hip, a holstered pistol bobbed with each stride he took. Behind him came an even bigger guard to circle around the other side of the Jeep.
“Jesus Christ,” John muttered under his breath as the armed men stalked toward the car.
The surly guard’s face lost some of its aggression as he ambled forward, but the whole thing still left Lisa on edge. She could sense John’s unease, too, as the second man strolled slowly up to the passenger window, his hand resting on his weapon. From the way John’s muscled shoulders tensed, there was little doubt he was prepared to draw his own pistol any second.
“It’s cool, relax.” Alec lifted his finger off the wheel in a casual wave of greeting as he cranked the driver’s side window down. “Hey, Luis, qué más?”
The guard on Alec’s side cracked a broad smile and chuckled. He thrust his big mitt into the vehicle to clasp Alec’s hand in greeting. “Qué has hecho, parce?”
They launched into a brief but congenial conversation in some form of Spanish. Alec was fluent, almost familial, with the men. As they were with him. Even the second guard’s face slackened into an expression that was almost friendly. Then the guard talking with Alec nodded to his comrade, who clicked a button on a remote he wore on his belt. The gate swung open, permitting them through.
Alec gave the two men another smile and a salute, then he drove inside the warehouse yard.
John slanted him a suspicious look as they rolled away from the guard shack. “My Spanish is rusty as fuck, but I’m guessing that was Colombian?”
“My friend and his associates are from Bogotá,” Alec said as he drove toward the large square building up ahead and the deepwater docks behind it.
“Your friend and his associates.” John grunted. He swung a glance at the warehouse and cursed. “Just what kind of safe house did you arrange for us, Stingray?”