So was she, and maybe it was time he told her so. “We were both lucky,” he said.
Her brows drew together with confusion.
“You had two sets of parents who loved you, too. But I’m not surprised, either. You are eminently lovable yourself.”
She sucked in her breath with surprise, her eyes raking his face as she took in his meaning as if searching to see whether he was in earnest.
He was. “I love you, Natalie.”
“You do?”
She looked so incredulous he had to smile along with the nod. “I should have told you a long time ago, but I wasn’t sure you felt the same way, and I was too much of a coward. But I’d finally worked up the courage to tell you when I got back.”
“Is that what you said you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Mostly.” He paused. “I’d also planned to ask you to marry me. I carried the ring around with me for weeks. I even had it with me on the mission.”
He wasn’t sure whether the tears that filled her eyes were happiness or sadness. Maybe both. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because what I did ruined everything.”
It hadn’t. But he’d tell her that when they were out of this, and he had the ring back in his pocket again. “You didn’t ruin anything, but we’re going to need to figure out a way to prove that, okay?”
She looked up at him, her eyes full of so much trust it made his heart squeeze. When she nodded, he knew there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to keep that promise.
Twenty-one
Kate had just hung up the phone with Mac, Brittany Blake’s friend whose skill with cyberespionage and subversion of cybersecurity could best anyone she knew in the CIA’s elite hacking team—including herself—when the doorbell rang.
She glanced at the security system monitor and stiffened, seeing Colt standing there. Her heart started to race. It was anxiousness about a possible confrontation, she told herself. It didn’t have anything to do with him or the fact that she couldn’t get the other night out of her head.
He’d been so sweet. So tender. So caring. So unlike the emotionally closed-off man she’d fallen in love with.
Until she’d brought out the adoption papers.
Her heart squeezed. It was silly to still feel disappointed; she should know better. She should know better about a lot of things.
She was tempted to ignore it—to ignore him—but Colt would just find a way in. His impatient stance and the determined way he was looking into the camera left her no doubt. Don’t make me break the door down.
She sighed, realizing she might as well get it over with. She was surprised that she’d put him off as long as she had. It had been cowardly to run, but she just couldn’t face him the morning after . . .
After what? How exactly did one characterize the colossal fuck-up that had also been the single most incredible and tender sexual experience of her life? A one-night stand? Her lapse into the stupid and “how the hell could I let myself go there again?”
Whatever you called it, Kate had left the hotel at the crack of dawn and caught an earlier flight back to DC. Colt had left increasingly frustrated messages on her phone for her to call him back—that they needed to talk—but her only response had been the short, businesslike e-mail to forward the camera footage from Alaska that Mac had dug up for Kate.
Kate walked from the kitchen into the foyer, going past the entry table that held the enormous bouquet of peonies. The pungent floral scent hit her senses with a burst of fragrance that was impossible to ignore, not unlike the man who’d sent them. She should have tossed them out when they’d arrived, but they were her favorite—as he knew—and she couldn’t bring herself to throw away something so beautiful no matter who’d sent them.
She’d had no such tossing issues, however, with the note that had accompanied them. It had gone into the trash not long after she read it. She didn’t want any more apologies. He was sorry. She got that. Maybe she could even forgive him. But ultimately it wasn’t enough.
She wanted a child. She’d put that aside for him once—or tried to—but she wasn’t going to do it again. And them talking about it wasn’t going to change her mind.
She intended to tell him that, but as soon as she opened the door, he handed her a folder. “We have a problem.”
From the grim look on his face and the fact that he wasn’t reading her the riot act for not calling him back, she knew it was serious. She stepped back to let him in, while opening the folder and removing a few pieces of paper. He shut the door behind him and waited as she flipped through the printouts.
They were stills from some of the camera footage Mac had found showing from different angles the two hit men who’d killed Travis. One of the photos must have been from a street camera, two appeared to be from the bank that Kate knew was across the street from the bar—it was the camera they’d initially focused on—and the last one, which was the clearest, was at the gas station near where they’d parked.
Kate had seen them already. “What’s the problem?” she asked. “These are good. We should have a better chance of identifying them. I’m running them through—”
“Don’t bother,” Colt said. “These guys won’t be in any databases—they don’t exist. But I know this guy.” He pointed to the mean-looking one with the MMA fighter nose and elaborate tattoo on his neck. “The ink fooled me initially, but that’s what it was supposed to do. The tattoos are fake. He’s one of ours.”
Kate was floored. “By ‘ours’ you mean . . . ?”
Colt nodded. “He works in the same group that I do. We’ve crossed paths once or twice.”
Oh my God. The ramifications were spinning in her head: one of the men who’d killed Travis was US black ops? “Are you sure? I thought operators in your group worked alone.”
“We do most of the time. But occasionally I cross paths with other operatives at the—” He stopped, obviously not wanting to tell her too much. “I’ve seen this guy a couple of times. His head is usually shaved but the nose is hard to forget.”
Even from the not exactly high-resolution photos, Kate could see that the operative’s nose was kind of pushed to the side, as if someone had hit it and it had just stayed in that position. She’d noticed it right away herself. It was the kind of nose that belonged on a boxer named Lefty.
“Jesus,” she said, understanding Colt’s grim expression. This was a disaster. It changed everything. It meant that unless Russia had a mole deep in US black ops—which seemed a stretch—the order to kill Travis had come from someone in the highest echelons of the American government. The very highest. Kate didn’t know much about the off-the-books group Colt worked with, but she knew they reported directly to the president. Which meant that only President Cartwright and her closest advisors would know about or have access to operatives like Colt.
“Maybe Scott was right.” She’d spoken her thoughts aloud and Colt looked at her questioningly. She filled him in on her last conversation with her brother. “I thought he was reaching, but what if Natalie wasn’t the source of the leak? What if she really did erase the program on the deputy secretary’s laptop before he went into that meeting?”
Colt finished her thought. “Then someone else in the room was responsible for passing on the information about Retiarius’s mission to Mick.” He cursed. “Who was in that meeting?”
“I imagine the usual suspects,” Kate said. “Aside from the president, the vice president, secretary of state, defense secretary, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would likely be involved in a high-level meeting like this about a covert operation. We know the deputy secretary of defense was there and I’m assuming due to Team Nine’s involvement the head of JSOC”—Joint Special Operations Command—“and WARCOM”—Naval Special Warfare Command—“I’ll call Scott. Natalie might know.”
&
nbsp; A few minutes later, they had confirmation of the attendees and one stuck out in the worst way. In a way that Kate had never considered, but which she couldn’t ignore. Her godfather, General Thomas Murray, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been at the meeting. The man whom they’d confided in and who’d been helping them. The man who’d led them to suspect Natalie in the first place by bringing forward the information about her Russian adoption. The man whose previous position in special operations and intelligence would make him knowledgeable about operators like Colt. And, most important, the man whose son’s plane had been shot down by the Russians and who had been trying to get the president to retaliate ever since.
She felt guilty even considering the possibility, but it was there.
She’d put Scott on speakerphone so she didn’t need to fill in Colt. When she looked at him, she knew he was thinking the same thing—without any of the guilt. He and her godfather had never gotten along.
“Did you tell the general about Scott being in Vermont?” Colt asked.
She nodded. “He asked for an update.”
Her stomach twisted at the additional “coincidence.” If the general was involved, it explained how the hit team had found Natalie so quickly.
Still, no matter how much it lined up, Kate didn’t want to believe her godfather—a man she’d known and cared about her whole life—could be involved with anything that could have led to the deaths of American servicemen. He was one of the most vocal voices in support of veterans and those who had given the ultimate sacrifice—especially after his son TJ had been killed in the line of duty.
Scott said what they were all thinking. “We need to see if we can get ahold of those laptops. If we can clear Natalie, it would help prove someone else was involved. I’m going to call Baylor to see if his guys can track down Natalie’s laptop at her parents’ house in Minnesota. If the police got to her apartment before Mick, it would have been packed up with her other things.”
“I’ll go after the deputy secretary’s,” Colt said.
“I should do it,” Scott said.
“No offense, Ace,” Colt said, “but this kind of thing is more up my alley.”
“Committing felonies?” Scott said, clearly ready to argue. “This is my problem. I’m not going to have you going to prison for me.”
“Which is exactly why you need to leave this to me,” Colt said. “So that no one goes to prison. And it isn’t just your problem. Those were my guys, too, and I want to see whoever was responsible pay.”
Kate wanted to argue with both of them. She didn’t want either one of them getting caught. But she knew Colt was right. “Let us handle this, Scott. You have enough to worry about with keeping Natalie away from the people who are after her.”
“She’s as safe as she can be,” Scott said. “You were right about this place being like Fort Knox.” He paused. “You were right about a lot of things.”
Kate took that to mean he’d talked to their father, which Scott confirmed. He told her he would fill her in on everything when he saw her. In other words, he didn’t want to spill his guts—and the family dirt—with Colt listening in.
Kate couldn’t hold back her happiness though that the first step, and the hardest, had been taken. She loved both her father and Scott, and being caught between them had been difficult for her.
By time they’d hung up, Scott had reluctantly agreed to let them handle the deputy secretary’s laptop. But if anything went wrong, they were to let him know immediately.
Colt was watching her in a way that made her feel self-conscious. She resisted the urge to fix her hair or look in the mirror on the wall above the flowers. Flowers that he’d, of course, noticed.
“You kept them.”
She didn’t want to talk about it so she ignored the half question. “We should figure out our plan for tonight.”
“My plan. And the less you know the better.” He gave her a hard look. “We’ll hit pause on everything else for now, but we are going to talk about this when I get back.” She didn’t argue, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. “I’ll go in tonight after the deputy secretary and his wife have gone to bed. They don’t have kids, right?”
She shook her head, feeling the reflexive stab in the chest at the mention of children. A stab she hid well from prying eyes; Colt always watched her carefully. But she’d grown adept at hiding her thoughts. “You aren’t as good with tech as I am,” she pointed out. “You might need me.”
Colt was going to try to sneak in and out without taking the laptop, figuring there would be less pushback later if someone found out or they were wrong.
“It’s not up for discussion, Kate. I work better alone, and having you with me would make my job harder.” His eyes met hers. “I’d be too worried about something happening to you.” No matter how hard she fought it, her heart still panged at that. She could hear the truth in his words. “You can give me one of those remote programs to access the computer. I should be able to manage that.”
She looked at the big, imposing man who’d been her husband for almost five years and still haunted her. She’d never get used to him putting himself in danger; she’d hated when he left on ops and still did. “What if something goes wrong?”
He gave her a half smile. “Nothing is going to go wrong. Compared to some of the places I’ve had to get into and out of without being seen, this will be a piece of cake.”
* * *
• • •
Famous last words, Kate thought hours later as she waited for the text from Colt to say that he’d found the laptop and inserted the thumb drive that she’d given him.
She stared at the clock on her computer. Three thirteen a.m. Colt had left well over an hour ago. Richard Waters, the deputy secretary of defense, lived in Arlington, which was less than ten miles from Kate’s townhouse in McLean. At this time of night, it should have taken him fifteen minutes to get there. Max.
He’d have to bypass the security—Colt had actually laughed when she asked whether he needed help with that—break inside, and then find the office where they hoped Waters would be likely to leave his computer. It shouldn’t have taken this long. Had something gone wrong?
A quick social media check of Mrs. Waters’s Facebook page hadn’t turned up any animal pictures so hopefully there wasn’t a dog to worry about. But what if the deputy secretary hadn’t brought the laptop back tonight? Or worse, what if he’d gotten a new one?
Something must have happened. Every single thing that could go wrong ran through Kate’s mind as she watched the slow flicker of time pass on the upper-right corner of her computer screen.
But in all the scenarios not once did she picture the squeal of a car taking the corner into her driveway too fast and then the hard screech of brakes as it came to a too-sudden stop.
She knew without looking out the window that it was Colt. Something had gone wrong! Oh God. The panicked hammer of her pulse skyrocketed as she raced downstairs and threw open the door.
Colt was already out of his rental car. Seeing him standing there gave her a welcome rush of relief.
But it didn’t last long. He took a step toward the house and staggered.
“Colt!” she cried out, and ran toward him, realizing something was wrong with him. He almost looked drunk.
She caught him right as he collapsed. He was a big man, and his weight nearly brought them both to the ground.
“Shit!” he cursed, holding his side while trying to straighten. “Sorry.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. The helpless prayer kept running through her head. She tried to help him as best she could, but she struggled under his weight. Eventually she managed to get her shoulders positioned under him to take enough of his weight where they could walk together into the house.
They didn’t make it to the living room couch. He collapsed right on the rug in the foyer,
and she came down next to him.
“Colt, talk to me. Tell me what . . .” Oh God, she thought again when she saw the stain on his shirt. Her stomach dropped. “You’re bleeding!”
Tears of fear and panic sprang to her eyes and jammed in her throat. Her heart seemed to be in there as well.
Colt gritted his teeth, clearly wanting to calm her down, but in too much pain to hide it. “Bastard shot me. He had a laptop alarm that went off as soon as I pulled the plug. I tried to leave through the window, but damn thing was jammed. By the time I got it open, he was coming through the door with a gun. He got off a lucky shot through my side as I was going out the window. Fuck,” he said, clenching and rolling up against the pain.
Kate had never felt so helpless. He didn’t look good. He was sweating and his skin was clammy and pale. She didn’t know what to do. The blood was seeping through his fingers, forming a puddle on the rug. “I have to call an ambulance.”
She started to stand but he grabbed her wrist to stop her. “And say what? That I was shot breaking into Deputy Secretary Waters’s home trying to access his laptop? No. You can’t. The bullet went straight through. Just get my blowout kit. It’s in the car. I’ll talk you through it.”
Colt had been a corpsman, the navy’s medic qualification, when he was a SEAL, but she’d never had any medical training. “Are you out of your mind?” she sobbed, yelling and crying at the same time. “I’m not going to let you die!”
He tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. “I’m not going to die, sweetheart. You won’t get rid of me that easily. But if I knew all it would take was getting shot to have you admit you cared for me again, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Don’t joke about this, Colt,” she said hollowly. “Don’t. I can’t take it right now. I’m scared.”
“I know you are, Kiki. I’m sorry. But no ambulance, okay?”
She looked at him helplessly. Wordlessly. The use of the old nickname (she’d played a “what’s my stripper name?” game once) only made her sob harder.
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