by Jenna Ryan
She resisted an urge to chuckle and kept her head averted. No point testing her luck unnecessarily.
She spied a baccarat table through the crowd and, behind it, an open exit door. Three men stood on the threshold inside. One of them had a long, dark ponytail and a flashy stud earring.
“Shit!” Amber stiffened, placed an open palm on Gage’s torso. “We need to leave. Now.”
“What do you see?” He dismissed the drunk to follow her gaze. “The guys by the door?”
“The one with the ponytail. I think it’s Luka.” The man turned slightly, affording her a clearer view of his features. “God, Gage, it is. He’s looking around.”
“Yeah, I see that.” He pressed her face into his shoulder, blocked Luka’s view with his body. “Don’t sweat it. We’re going to go out the same way we came in and take the side door to the parking lot.”
Amber didn’t argue. Head down, she walked with him and, at the same time, attempted to sift through the dozens of thoughts darting wildly through her head.
Had Luka and his people been that close behind them all along, or was their being there part of the setup Gage had suggested when he’d heard about Rachel’s escape?
Someone had been on their tail from the start, she knew that much. Which meant at least one of her possessions was bugged. But her phone was gone and Gage had examined pretty much everything else.
So how was Luka’s being there possible?
“Rachel’s so-called escape has to have been a setup on both sides,” she concluded. “It makes sense and— Where did he go?”
“Stay calm.” Gage reached back and under his jacket. “He’s not in front of us.”
“Yes, he is.” She stopped dead. “He’s right there, Gage, next to that black marble column. I don’t think he’s seen us. He’s holding a device that looks a lot like the one we’ve been using to track Rachel.”
“Okay, that’s it. Keep your head down and get ready to run.”
She saw him whip out his gun and take aim at the chandelier overhead. “What, wait,” she objected. “Are you insane?”
He fired six shots in rapid succession. Crystal shattered, lightbulbs exploded, people screamed and immediately began to run.
Gage fired again, four more times, then grabbed her hand. “Fire door,” he shouted above the instant pandemonium.
Amber stole a quick look at Luka, but she couldn’t see anything except his ponytail. Then even that vanished as he was shoved through the main doors by a group of panicky gamblers.
A man with a beetle brow materialized in front of them. “Hello, Alexa. Long time no see. I gotta say, you’re looking real good…”
Straight-arming his gun, Gage shot him in the throat. Still smiling lewdly, the man dropped to the floor where he stood.
Shock swept through Amber’s body. “You killed him.”
“Yep. Keep moving.”
She had to step over the dead man’s outstretched hand. Gage plucked the gun he held free and pushed her through the door.
Her teeth were chattering by the time they reached the Range Rover. She fumbled the door open and scrambled inside.
Then, instead of endless questions racing through her head, her mind went numb. She couldn’t think at all. But she had to.
Beetle brow, beetle brow. He’d looked so familiar. Did she know him from the hotel in Las Vegas? Yes, she did. He’d been part of Owen’s personal staff. Security guard. Former mercenary. She’d never seen him smile.
She watched for Luka behind them as Gage peeled out of the lot. “Damn. Should I strip? Lose everything I’m wearing?”
“I’m good with that.” Gage flicked a glance at the rearview mirror. “But you don’t have to go there quite yet. I checked all your clothes and jewelry, remember?”
“Maybe it’s the pull on my zipper or the strap on my backpack.” She felt the sides of her boots. Her fingers passed over two small chains. “Jesus, Gage, it could be anywhere on anything.”
“Or Luka and his boys could simply have known where we were headed and gotten lucky.”
“I don’t believe that, and neither do you.”
“What I believe is that we got out of there undamaged. Luka’s down a man and we’re closing in on your sister.”
“Right, yes, good.” She forced herself to breathe, find her center, her balance. Quiet her mind. “It could be in my other boots. I bought them at the hotel… I see headlights.”
“So do I. We’re on a highway.”
“At two in the morning? Wait, they’re gone.” Her mind spun in super-fast mode. “His name was Quint. He claimed to have killed twenty-five men in one hour in one skirmish in the Middle East.”
“He’d have killed me in a heartbeat and handed you over to Mockerie even faster. He died quickly. You won’t if Mockerie gets ahold of you.”
“Consider me comforted. God, what now?” That’s when Gage’s phone rang.
He put it on speaker. “Hey, Bear. What’s up?”
“Not the ponytail or his crony, not anymore.”
Amber’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You killed Luka?”
“I didn’t kill anyone, just broke a few bones, put holes in a few interesting places. They won’t be bothering you for six, maybe eight weeks. Are we square now, Gage?”
“Getting closer.” Gage slowed their speed a little. “Thanks, Bear. Go on home. I’ve got it from here.”
Bear snorted. “Pretty sure you said that self-same thing five minutes before we got our ride blown out from under us in Afghanistan. Later, bro.”
“Bro?” Amber wondered if the surprises would ever end. “Now you’re his brother?”
“Depends on his mood.”
“Well, mine’s all about not being a blip on someone else’s device. If I get rid of everything I’m wearing and carrying and, I don’t know, wear your clothes, they can’t possibly follow us, right?”
“It’s a sound theory,” he agreed. “Try and sleep, Amber. I’m ninety-nine percent sure they already know where we’re going, with or without a tracking device.”
Letting her head fall back, Amber regarded the sky outside. One hazy star twinkled through a break in the clouds. “I’d make a wish if I could narrow the number of possibilities down to a reasonable number.”
Gage cut off at the next exit. “I can narrow that number down for you right now.”
Unsure, she glanced at the road behind them. “I don’t see anything.”
“That’s because you’re looking the wrong way.”
She switched her gaze back. And felt her heart sink into her stomach when he pointed to a flashing red light on the dash.
…
Owen cradled a bottle of his beloved aged whiskey. He hadn’t taken so much as a sip of it when his home phone rang.
If Luka was contacting him on a landline, it must have been important. Probably catastrophic the way his luck had been running lately.
“What is it, Luka?”
“She got away.”
Completely unruffled, because given his nephew’s track record, that was hardly shocking news, Owen nodded. “Of course she did. Are you still following her?”
“Hard to fucking do that with both my kneecaps shot out.”
Finally, Owen heard the strain in Luka’s voice. He’d have sympathized if the stakes hadn’t been quite so high. “Morgan?” he asked.
“No, some big ape with a crazy gleam in his eyes. Who the hell cares? Quint’s dead. Morgan did him.”
“Merciful end.” Owen stroked the whiskey bottle as if it were a cherished pet. “Where are you?”
“They’re going to airlift me to a hospital in Baton Rouge. Stuart, too, if you care. Both his arms are busted, and he has two bullets near his groin.”
“Ouch.” The third member of the unfortunate trio sounded worse off than his nephew. Owen thought quickly. The backup team was gone, and the lead team hadn’t checked in for several hours. All wasn’t lost yet, but it would be if things didn’t start clicking int
o place.
With regret, he set the whiskey bottle on his desk. “Call me from Baton Rouge,” he said to his nephew. “You might want to ask for a no visitors order from the doctor in charge.”
“Why?”
“If you can smuggle one in, keep your gun handy. Mockerie doesn’t take failure well.”
Luka was still swearing when Owen disconnected. With a mournful last gaze at the bottle, he picked up his cell phone and contacted his on-call pilot.
“Get the plane ready,” he ordered the man. “Maximum fuel load. We’re flying to Louisiana. I’ll let you know exactly where before we take off.”
Ending the call, he speed-dialed the lead team. When he got no answer, he left a terse message. “I’m en route. I need to know where you are. Exactly where you are.”
He’d call his contact from the plane, make sure he was still on board. Mockerie had done the deal with him. Although he was newly acquired, James believed he’d finish the job he was being paid to do. Then, if he was smart, he’d disappear for good. Burrow deep and enjoy whatever time Mockerie gave him.
Just like the rest of them.
…
They had no time to stop for repairs, and Gage didn’t have the patience right then to deal with the engine warning light. He punched the “Vehicle Needs Service” reset button, cursed Bear’s friend, and concentrated on the road both ahead and behind.
Amber watched the tracker’s screen. “The blip’s still not moving.” She tapped the device with a fingertip. “That isn’t good, is it?”
“It says trap to me, but my head’s been there since we found out Rachel had escaped.”
“I can’t think.” Amber dropped her hand and the tracker in her lap, rolled her head from side to side. “My brain’s too exhausted to move in logical lines. How do you do it?”
“Adrenaline. It kicks in when all else fails. Whether you know it or not, it’s kept you going since we left the hotel casino.”
“That and sheer terror.” She let out a long breath, regarded him sideways. “We were all we had, Rachel, me, and our brother Elijah. Our parents fought, day and night. I don’t recall them ever having a quiet conversation. Remember I told you that Rachel and I both liked our new names better?”
“I remember.”
“That’s because our mother wanted all sons. Alex and George. Those were going to be our names. I don’t know what our father wanted. I’m not sure he cared. Having kids was just something you did. Something you were supposed to do. Like getting married, which I’m not sure he wanted to do, either. He took care of us after our mother left, but only because that was expected of him, too. He gave us stuff to keep us happy and out of his hair.”
“Sounds like Rachel’s kind of dad.”
“She wasn’t always spoiled, Gage. Or, well, maybe a little. She was born more demanding. Just not quite as obnoxious as she became later.”
“Or as jealous? You’re more beautiful than her by a long shot.”
Amber’s smile was faint and slightly wistful. “But that’s in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? You behold one way, Owen beheld another.”
“How did Luka behold you?”
“Luka was never in the mix. He likes men.”
“And Gareth?”
“He liked Alexa. I’m not her anymore. I don’t want to be her again.”
“I’m thinking you never really were. Sometimes, people figure out who they are by playing games, taking on different roles, testing the water. You tried glamorous and probably liked it at the time.”
“I did.”
“Then things changed, and you became a spy. Also quite a glamorous role, or so Hollywood would have us believe.”
“It was a bit Hollywood-like, living on the edge of danger. Maybe death. But in the end? Not so glamorous. Black Creek was…a revelation. Rachel was horrible the whole time we were there. She kept wanting to contact Owen, see if she could make him understand that she’d had no part in what I’d done. She’s been pissed off at me for the past month. As you can see, she still is.”
“Pissed off and relying on your sense of guilt to help rescue her.”
“She’s not wrong to blame me for the situation she landed in, Gage. A thousand years could pass, and she’d never believe Owen would hurt her, forget killing her.”
“So now she’s with a guy called Bobby Lee, heading for New Orleans. I’d venture a guess that her belief’s starting to develop cracks. Maybe, on a smaller scale, those cracks were there before you left Las Vegas.”
“Maybe,” Amber agreed. “Rachel’s extremely good at deluding herself, and denial’s been her constant companion since childhood.” She waited a moment before asking, “If we’re heading into a trap and we know it, what are we going to do once we’re in? I’m assuming you have a plan to get us out.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Gage…”
He cast her an unreadable look. “It’s less about a plan and more about timing and execution. I have no idea how many people will be waiting for us, how they’ll come at us, or where Rachel will factor into it.”
“You still don’t trust her, do you?”
“Actually, I do, in as much as I trust anyone. But I also think she’s scared, and frightened people tend to be unpredictable.”
Amber considered the situation from her sister’s perspective. “Actually, Rachel’s fairly predictable when she’s frightened.”
“She fights back.”
“And shouts and flails.”
“Can you calm her down if you want to, get her moving?”
“Probably.” She ran her hands over the chains on her boots again. “Is she my sole responsibility once we’re there?”
“That and shooting anyone who moves and isn’t me or her.”
“This is so not promising. Tell me, what happened between you and Bear that he’s willing to do as much as he has in return?”
“I pried him out of a vehicle that had been hit by a car bomber in Afghanistan. His legs were caught and he was only half conscious. He kept saying to shoot him. Finally did—in the shoulder. I knocked him out, dragged him out, and a minute later, watched five twisted-up Jeeps go up in a fireball.”
“Uh, okay. Wow.”
“Couple months later, I took out a female soldier who was playing possum during an air strike. I saw her fingers move, Bear didn’t. She tripped him, he went down, lost his weapon. I killed her. There’s more, but you get the idea. It’s what you do when a fellow solider is compromised. We didn’t like each other when we met. Being in the Army changed that.”
“You have a history.”
“Yep. The odd thing is, what he seems to appreciate most is the time we went out drinking and I puked on his pants. He was every bit as hammered as I was, but he was bigger, stronger, and meaner. He dragged me outside, probably intending to punch the shit out of me. Bomb hit the bar less than two minutes after we got through the door.”
“Well, yay you.”
He pointed to a road sign. “Astrid’s two hundred miles from here. Thirty more on top of it, and we’ll be wherever Rachel is. If she doesn’t move.”
If their vehicle didn’t die, Amber added silently. If her sister wasn’t already dead. If Owen’s men didn’t blindside them. The list went on.
A hundred miles farther on, they were forced to stop. The Range Rover was overheating. Out of sight on a rutted road with swamps all around. Gage raised the hood, added water to the radiator. He hopped back in and drew Amber across the seat.
“What are we doing now?” she demanded.
“Taking a break.” He eased her head onto his shoulder. “I need to think, sleep for five minutes if I can. We don’t want to rush into another barrage of enemy fire. If we can help it.”
Would it matter in the end if they rushed in or crept in? Owen’s people would have things under control, and God knew how many of them would be waiting to ambush them.
On the upside, though, Luka was gone. And Quint. And w
hoever the third man had been.
She felt Gage’s heart beating under the hand she’d set on his chest. The sensation steadied her and allowed her to slide into a sleep deep enough that the sounds of the swamp no longer intruded. Not the insects, or the frogs, or the owls.
Not even the twig that snapped close behind them.
Chapter Nineteen
Amber woke up dazed and disoriented. Far from refreshed, but not quite as muzzy headed as she had been.
Rain poured from a lead-gray sky, and every bone, every muscle, every joint in her body felt stiff and unusable.
She discovered she was alone in the Range Rover. But the hood was down, and she was still in one piece. All good things, she supposed.
The door opened and Gage climbed in, soaked to the skin and carrying a bag that smelled like heaven.
“Man with a shack and a mother who’s blind saw us parked here and tapped on the window last night,” he revealed. “The guy said we’d sink into Ella Mae’s grave if we didn’t move quickly.”
“We moved?” Amber paused in her perusal of the bag. “How did I not notice that? How did neither of us notice we were parked in a bog?”
“Mud’s mud to an out-of-stater.” He grinned at her. “The guy’s name is Gerry. You’re welcome to use his outhouse before we leave.”
“Outhouse,” she repeated. “Well, it’s better than a pond, I guess?” She relinquished the bag. “Please don’t eat everything Gerry and his mother gave us.”
“Take your pack. There’s room inside to change if you want to.”
She did want to, very badly. Not into anything she owned, but what choice did she have?
The outhouse surprised her. Pleasantly. It had running water, a warm trickle shower, and a toilet with a box of tissue paper on the back. She used all the facilities, then she brushed her teeth, changed her clothes, and even switched to her other boots, because why not? One way or another, they were heading into a hornet’s nest of trouble.
Pulling her hair back, she packed up her gear and ran for the SUV.
“Better?” Gage asked.
“Definitely.” She reached for the bag. “What’s in here besides more of that coffee you’re drinking?”