by Julie Miller
I took you under my wing because I felt guilty over Leo and Irina’s deaths. We’d worked so closely together in Z-Group that they were like family, too. Your mother was a beautiful woman, a spectacularly resourceful and talented agent (hmm, I wonder where you get your ability to adapt and think on your feet). Your father was a good man and a good friend who sacrificed more than any of us to keep the Soviet bloc from exposing our agents and stealing our secrets.
Your mother turned out to be a double agent— trading our technologies as often as she brought us something useful from behind the Iron Curtain—endangering all our lives and threatening to undermine the entire project. Leo was the one who volunteered to eliminate her. He said he couldn’t allow anyone else to take care of his wife. He was so heartbroken.
You have to understand. It was the Cold War. Countries in eastern Europe were revolting against their governments and falling apart. It was impossible to know who to trust beyond our team—Me. Bill Caldwell. James McBride. Leroy Maynard. Charlie Rogers. Laura Zook. Alistair Hunt. Irina and Leo. I’m telling you the names because we were all responsible for your parents’ deaths. Leo staged the car accident—I think he wanted all three of you to die so that none of you would have to be alone—but we all agreed that Irina was a threat. We all agreed she had to be taken care of.
Brooke, I’ve signed documents and taken blood oaths to keep the business of Z-Group and its operatives secret for as long as I live. When the Cold War ended, the need for the cell ended. But the promise remained. The guilt stayed with me, too.
I love you like a daughter, kiddo. And I value your friendship. But I’m partly responsible for your parents’ deaths. Someday, I hope you can forgive me for that.
Until then, be healthy, stay safe. And know that you have always been loved.
—John
She didn’t remember her mother, but she’d been a traitor.
She didn’t remember her father, but he’d been a hero.
“Don’t let Brooke go with her mother.” Brooke sniffled as she repeated her father’s last words. After reading John’s letter, they took on a whole new meaning than the one she’d been allowed to believe.
Not, don’t let Brooke die. But rather, Irina’s the enemy. Don’t let my daughter be with the enemy.
Did Leo Hansford even know if his mission to eliminate his wife—a double agent—had been a success? Had he died fearing that Irina Zorinsky was still a threat to the members of the team? Had he intended to die along with her? Or had his last assignment gone horribly wrong?
Were her parents’ deaths and the cover-up that followed the reason John and other members of the defunct Z-Group had been murdered?
Unable to read any more, Brooke closed the file and ejected the disk. Tucking the disk case into the back pocket of her cutoff shorts, she picked up the phone to call Atticus.
And realized she wasn’t alone.
Chapter Thirteen
“Mirza?”
Seeing her friend’s face topped by a blonde wig and purple K-State ball cap, and scowling at her through the window of her back door seemed almost as incongruous as the large gun pointed at her through the glass.
Brooke didn’t wait for the picture to make sense. She debated for all of two nanoseconds whether to climb into the rafters and hide, or get the hell out of there, before spinning around toward the front door. She lurched as the entryway behind her exploded. She never heard the discharge of the gun, but splintered wood and flying glass were bombardment enough to send her tearing through the house.
“I want that disk. I know you found it.”
Where was the musical Indian accent? What happened to the timid friend who’d been afraid to leave his cubicle?
She reached the thick oak doors, original to the building. Beautiful to look at, heavy and warped and unwieldy enough for Brooke to curse their fine craftsmanship. She twisted the lock open and tugged at the crossbar. “Come on!”
“Be the smart little girl I know you are and give me the disk!” Mirza kicked out the jagged glass and reached inside to unlock the door. “I’ll make sure your death is swift and painless.”
“How about I just don’t die at all!” The heavy oak groaned as Brooke scraped the crossbar across its moorings.
Heavy footsteps coming up fast behind her spurred her strength. Brooke smacked into the door as the crossbar popped free and her momentum threw her forward. Pretending the blow to her head wasn’t ringing through her entire skull, she swung open the door and ran out into the hazy twilight.
“That disk is mine!” Mirza thundered after her. “I worked too hard to get it.” Brooke circled around the house, avoiding the windows and sticking to the spreading shadows. She didn’t know if she was heading for a neighbor’s house or the open street or a place to hide. She only knew she had to get the disk someplace safe. “I played stupid so I could get close to you. I sent you flowers and messages and copied all of Fierro’s bad habits so that the cops would focus their attention on him. We knew you had access to Kincaid’s files. I just had to stay close to you until you found it.”
We? Mirza and Tony were in this together? No. He was in competition with Tony Fierro, using her association with the ex-con to terrorize her so completely that Mirza could sneak into her world unnoticed. He’d had access to deliver those flowers, that letter. Putting that mutilated picture on her e-mail would have been a cakewalk for a man of Mirza’s skills.
So who was the we he was talking about?
Survive first. Think later.
Brooke ducked down behind one of McCarthy’s portable generators and wondered if Mirza could hear her deep, labored breathing. Think, Brooke. Think. She didn’t need to bring a man with a gun into any of her neighbor’s houses. Her car was in the shop. Where did she run? Where could she hide?
“I know you’re alone, Brooke.” Mirza’s footsteps crunched on the hard-packed dirt. “I waited until that cop and your aunts left. I know your boyfriend isn’t here.”
The lumber.
Before Mirza and his gun rounded the corner, Brooke scooted between the stacks of wood waiting to become the second floor of her house. Needing to arm herself, she pried at one of the boards. The long piece jiggled but refused to budge.
The footsteps stopped.
Brooke caught her breath and held it, desperately trying to get a fix on Mirza’s position through the pulse beat pounding in her ears.
So much for arming herself. So much for running. She straightened her back against the lumber and slowly inched along her way to the corner. Back… Back…
A hard hand closed over her mouth, muffling Brooke’s scream as a man pulled her around the corner.
He pushed her against the lumber, wrapping his body around her like a cocoon. She recognized Atticus by scent alone, even before she heard his toneless whisper.
“Shh. It’s me, honey.”
But Mirza had already heard the yip of sound and was closing in.
Atticus’s lips moved against her ear, sending frissons of warmth to mix with the shivers of fear that left her shaking. “With that silencer, I’m guessing he only has five or six shots. He’s coming from the left. I’ll draw him out to the right. If he starts firing wildly, dive for the ground and stay put. I called for backup, but if I go down before they get here, I want you to take my gun and shoot the son of a bitch.”
He truly stunk at pep talks.
But Brooke nodded her understanding and clung to the wood as Atticus removed his hand and turned toward the footsteps. His gun was drawn, his arm rock-steady.
Death approached.
“I love you.”
Brooke mouthed the words, whispered a prayer.
“Stay put,” Atticus ordered before disappearing around the corner.
The eight longest seconds of her life passed by before two seconds of gunfire played out in Brooke’s backyard. She dropped to the ground as Atticus had instructed, nearly chewing through her lip to keep herself from shouting out his name. Sulfuric wi
sps of gunpowder hung in the air and stung her nose. She heard grunts and cursing. A distinctive click and then silence.
How long did she wait before crawling around the corner to see if Atticus was still alive?
A sleek red sports car skidded through the gravel on the street and jumped the curb, grinding to a stop only a few feet from her hiding place. Holden climbed out, gun in hand. Backup had arrived.
Could she move now?
“Brooke!”
Atticus. She was on her feet and running before he called her name a second time.
He was tucking his gun into the back of his belt and straightening his jacket when she launched herself at him. He braced his feet and caught her on the fly. But they still tumbled backward into the stack of lumber. Brooke held on tight and landed safely in his arms. He was alive. He was safe.
He was kissing the stuffing out of her.
Holding her face between hands that meant business, he kissed her again, and again, and again, with a rare abandon that left her feverish and flustered and unable to speak.
“I love you, too, honey. I love you, too.”
She was vaguely aware of Holden looming up behind Atticus. “I’d ask if you needed my help, big brother, but I’m afraid I’d get my face slapped.”
“The perp’s on the ground. I cuffed him to the generator. He’s got a bullet graze on his arm. Take care of it.”
Holden nodded. “That I can handle.” He glanced over Atticus’s shoulder and winked at Brooke. “Looks like the situation is under control here.”
Holden was gone by the time Atticus let Brooke come up for air. He brushed his thumbs beneath her glasses, wiping away her tears. The exuberance of that out-of-control kiss had faded. “You’ve been crying.”
“I’m tired of solving mysteries and playing detective.” She pulled the disk from her back pocket and pushed it into Atticus’s hands. “Here. Take it. It’s what Mirza was after. It’s what Tony wanted, too. It’s all about something called Z-Group, involving John and my parents and some other… spies. And I think my mother… may be the reason your father was killed.”
Instead of condemnation, she heard admiration in his tone. “You cracked the code.”
“I cracked the code.” She lifted her gaze up to his steel-gray eyes, needing to see the truth—whatever it might be—written there. “Did you hear me? I think my mother was the reason your father was killed. Some kind of cover-up. Do you still want to say you love me?”
“I love you,” he gloated, succinctly enough for her to believe it. Atticus tucked Brooke beneath his chin and she wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled close. At one of the most unsettled times of her life, this was the safest, warmest—only—place she wanted to be.
“How about this?” Atticus asked, moving so he could kiss her hair, her nose, her lips. “Next time we have a mystery to solve, I’ll play the part of the hard-nosed detective, and you play the role of the smart, scrappy—fairly uncoordinated—and absolutely beautiful woman I love.”
“That’s your best pep talk yet.” Brooke smiled and kissed him back.
Epilogue
“Mr. Smith, is it done?”
“Yes. Patel is dead. A tragic mix-up with tainted blood at the hospital where he was being treated. It was far easier to accomplish than your son’s death.”
The boss swallowed hard, surprised at the twinge of remorse. “Antonio was never my son. He was a bastard child. A mistake.”
“And yet you hired him to work for you. How many years did he serve your cause?”
“Twenty-seven. Not counting the ten years he was in prison.”
“Twenty-seven years? And you never once admitted to him that you were his—”
“Antonio was a secret I wanted to keep. Just like the disk Patel promised he’d retrieve for me. I actually thought he was going to succeed.” Mr. Smith opened the car’s door, and climbed in behind the wheel himself before the boss continued. “But now Antonio is dead and I’m left in a little bit of a dicey situation.”
“You want me to track down the alledged witness?”
Meeting the dark eyes in the rearview mirror, the boss nodded. Without corroboration from a witness, Kincaid’s disk was just the fanciful imagining of a burned-out cop with a big imagination. A motive with no perp. Without the disk, KCPD’s mystery witness was just someone who’d seen a car outside an old warehouse. A clue with no context.
But if the KCPD acquired both pieces of the puzzle and someone was bright enough to put them together…
“Find that witness. I want you to take care of it personally. No games this time.”
“What about Brooke Hansford and Atticus Kincaid?” Mr. Smith started the engine and pulled the car into Kansas City’s downtown traffic. “They just bought two plane tickets to Sarajevo. She wants to bring her father’s body to Kansas City and rebury him here.”
Dicey was an understatement. Decisive action needed to be taken. “What about her mother?”
“Miss Hansford has clearance to dig up her mother’s body, too. I’m sure they’re trying to confirm the KCPD’s double-agent theory, and how John Kincaid was going to blow the whistle on events that went down thirty years ago.” Mr. Smith was proving to be just as thorough as each of his predecessors had been. “What happens if she decides to run DNA tests on the remains in that casket?”
“Then she’ll find out that Irina Zorinsky isn’t buried there.”
* * * * *
The Kincaid brothers' investigation
continues this September in
Private S.W.A.T. Takeover
only from Mills & Boon® Intrigue.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2009
by Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Julie Miller 2008
ISBN: 978-1-408-90874-7