“Then who’s your boss?”
It was her turn to be dumbfounded. Seriously? After everything she just said and he was focused on her employer? Unbelievable! “That doesn’t matter. What matters is—”
“Who. Is. Your. Boss,” he demanded.
“I am not telling you that, because it doesn’t matter!”
“Madeline,” Van warned in full on warrior mode again. “His name. Now.”
“No.” Answer delivered, Maddie marched out of the elevator to the next security panel. She had it open and her alpha numeric code halfway entered by the time he stomped over to breathe down her neck. “Don’t even. I’m done arguing with you.”
“We’re not over. This conversation isn’t over.”
“It is tonight,” she informed him as she leaned in for the retina scan. A security question popped up on the screen: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? “Pi,” she answered.
Passcode accepted, the air lock doors hissed with release then she grabbed the handle and yanked. “Drop your gear on the couch, then give me your phone.”
“I’m not giving you shit until you answer my question.”
Halfway into the foyer, she spun on him. “Why does it matter, Van? You’re not in this for the long haul.”
“The hell I’m not! You’re pregnant with my sons and I’m not losing you!”
“You can’t possibly know that,” she fired back. “And even if you did that is not excuse enough for me to trust you with me, myself, and… my secrets!”
“There will be no secrets! I am your husband!”
“Ex-husband,” she corrected and tiny part of her cringed uttering that God awful phrase.
He fumed silently in front of her and their eyes clashed in battle. His nostrils flared with anger and she felt him striving to dominate her. To force her into giving up that which he demanded.
Well, it sucked to be him, because she wasn’t weak. Not anymore. Not after the crap he’d pulled and how he’d left her to walk through hell on her own.
“Give me your phone, Tango,” she ordered. “Because this conversation… is over.”
She arched a brow and waited for the inevitable explosion of words that didn’t come.
He held her gaze as he dropped his bag to the floor, then fished out his phone and held it out to her.
She took it then broke eye contact to turn and head for the front room.
“It will never be over, Madeline.” His voice was calm, soft, and full of power and pure lethal alpha male that sent a shiver down her spine. “As long as there is breath in my body… it. Will. Never. Be. Over.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The door to the warehouse slammed shut behind him and Tango released a long breath of relief. Standing there, not saying a damn word, while watching Maddie do her thing to hook him up with access to the warehouse had painful. Brutally painful because he’d kept his mouth shut and not given in the urge to grab her and shake her until she gave him the answers he desperately needed to his questions.
She knew Michael Sinclair.
She’d turned down the boss man’s offer.
And he’d let her.
Unfuckingbelievable.
Oh it wasn’t so incredible that he couldn’t believe that Sinclair had tried to get her to come to the dark side, but that she’d said no and… gotten away with it?
He didn’t buy it. Not for a minute.
He knew Sinclair. Knew his ways, means, and preferred methods of convincing people to do his command. Blackmail, brute force, and bribery were too barbaric for a man of his refined tastes. He was cultured, academic, and so damn good at reading people’s motivations and desires that he always got what he wanted.
Because carrots dangle for a reason.
And that damned Machiavellian mastermind was the best of the best at damn carrot dangling. Something Tango was intimately aware of given the nature of his recruitment into the top secret organization.
His phone vibrated in his hand and he looked down at it, then switched over to answer Fox on his earwig. “How many presents?”
“Two and… there’s a problem.”
“Of course, there is,” Tango muttered under his breath as he laid his left hand on the hand scanner so whatever chip in the wedding band Maddie had given him in the warehouse as a visitor’s pass could work its magic to open the elevator doors. “Sit tight. I’m headed to you.”
He disconnected as he stepped into the elevator and punched in the code she’d written on his palm. Code entered, the doors slid shut while Tango made another call. One that he definitely couldn’t make with either Maddie or his team around to overhear.
The smarmy Brit answered on the first ring. “About bloody time. You alone or is Maddie on the line, too?”
“Alone. What the hell is going on?”
“Nexus Suit was stolen from a secure facility a week ago.”
Tango uttered a harsh string of curses. “How could you let that happen?”
“Point that shit at someone else,” Caliv said. “Your government was tasked with guarding it. Not mine.”
“Sinclair know about this,” Tango demanded.
“Wouldn’t doubt it but he’s not taking my calls at the present.”
Tango paused to think, then said, “Assume the bounty on her alive is because they need Maddie to rewire the suit, then make it operational again?”
“That’s our guess.”
Tango exited the elevator and started down the corridor back to the smelly elevator. “Who issued the bounty?”
“Not sure, yet. Just know more than a handful of people are after her. Including Rutger Dillon, Sanjay, and Michael Black.”
“Shit.” Tango turned the corner and the smelly elevator was in sight. “Focus on Sanjay.”
“But he’s the lesser of evils in that line up.”
Tango reached the elevator and did a rinse, repeat with the security protocol. “Dillon is small fish. No way does he have access to the type of mercs that showed up at the farmhouse.”
“Black does,” Caliv assured him.
“True, but…,” he paused as the elevator started to groan open. Damn, that stunk. “Black isn’t behind this.”
“You know this for certain?”
Tango took a deep breath and entered the elevator from hell, then tapped out the third code Maddie had etched on his palm with the fine tip of her ball point pen. “Hell no, but I do know that he’s not hurting for money and a million isn’t nearly enough to make him want to tangle with me.”
Granted the line he’d just delivered was a lie, but Caliv didn’t need to know that Michael Black and Tango had history. A damn good one that both of them kept secret for a reason. The kind of reason that had developed when they’d been kids in the same foster home.
“Makes sense.” Caliv paused and there was some typing in the background. “Has Madeline been in contact with her brothers and father?”
“Only her youngest brother. My team’s bringing him now. No word from Zed and Nev, yet. She tried them both and Colby Jack, but no answer,” Tango said.
Caliv hmmed to himself. “Not good. Her family is the way to get to her.” He paused. “Tell Maddie to relocate you to the warehouse—”
“We’re there.”
“Really? I didn’t get a notification.” More keys clicked in the background. “Sneaky little minx. Setting up codes to keep your comings and goings from me. Well done, love, well done.”
The admiration in the smarmy Brit’s voice was all he needed to remind him of the unclaimed friends with benefits offer that’d been shot down and Tango growled out a warning, “Call my wife ‘love’ one more time and my boot will be shoved so far up your ass, I’ll get a foot massage the next time you masturbate.”
Caliv chuckled. “Understood.”
“You’re damn lucky she turned down your offer.”
The laughter stopped abruptly. “Told you about that, did she?”
Tango remained sile
nt and waited for the Brit to start digging his own grave.
“Uh, yes, well, about that… she was depressed and I hate to see a woman such as her depressed and, uh, she did tell you she turned it down, right?”
“She did.” Tango deliberately paused. “Which is the only reason you’ll live to see your next counseling session.”
“Wall-to-wall?”
Again Tango stayed silent.
“Wall-to-wall it is. Looking forward to it. You done?”
“For now.”
“Warning duly noted and warily received,” Caliv mumbled. “You should be good at the warehouse for tonight. Get some rest. Make sure Maddie gets some too. She’s been on edge lately and—”
“Leave my wife to me,” Tango interrupted.
“Technically ex-wife and I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but whatever… in for a pence in for a pound. Warehouse is secure, stocked with three months supplies, and designed to survive a nuclear attack in style and comfort. Delta team will focus on finding the Nexus Suit and confirming Sanjay’s connection. You get Fox focused on locating Maddie’s family.”
“Send me everything you have on their last known locations,” Tango ordered.
“You’ll have it in five minutes. Delta out.”
Caliv disconnected and Tango finished the journey to front of the building where Fox and Dell were waiting in the van. He jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. “Left at the stop light, then two blocks north.”
Fox put the van into gear and started on their way. “What about your car?”
“We’ll get it later. After the prisoners are in timeout.”
From the back, Dell said, “We have a problem.”
Tango turned around and nodded to the bodies. “Are they out?”
Dell nodded. “Knocked them out myself.” He nudged a prone body laying at his feet. “Whiskey recognized this guy. He was there the day Romeo was shot.”
Hearing that was like ice water to the face and a knife to the heart. “Shit. He absolutely positive?”
Dell nodded, but said, “Call him yourself.”
“Fuck me.” Tango scrubbed a hand over his face. Could things get much worse? He glanced at his phone and gave Fox the directions that Maddie had given him to the warehouse’s loading docks and a holding cell she’d designed for prisoners. She’d called it a ‘timeout box’. He’d seen the designs of it years ago. A more accurate description would have been box of horrors, but whatever. “We do not need Whiskey or Bravo losing their shit over this.”
“They’re fifteen minutes out,” Fox announced.
“Bravo’s driving,” Dell added.
So much for a full fifteen. He’d be lucky if he got half that to figure this out. They arrived at the loading bay and he still didn’t have half a plan to do shit with. “Why is it always that one simple mission that leads to a cluster fuck of epic proportions?”
“Because we’re special,” Fox said as he navigated the van down a back alley.
Tango gave him a look.
Dell snorted.
“What? We are,” Fox assured them as he backed into the loading bay.
Tango shook his head. “Load the prisoners into the timeout chamber while I try to figure a way out of the shit storm that’s about to happen.”
Back in the bunker, Maddie didn’t dare take a breath and relax until the warehouse front door had slammed behind her very pissed off ex-husband. Once he was out, she reset the front door locks, then returned to her command station and drummed her fingers on the desk not so patiently waiting for him to meander his sexy self into the transfer elevator. Finally in, she waited for the lift to start moving and… green light, go.
She jumped up from the console and raced to her go bag then dug out the in case of emergency burner phone zipped in an inside pocket. Ten second later she was making the call she’d been itching to make ever since Fritz had worked its magic.
Two rings and then her closest friend in the whole wide world, Andrei Ivanov, demanded. “Where are you?”
“At the warehouse.”
“Alone or—”
“My ex-husband and his team are with me. Well, not at the moment but—”
“Why aren’t they with you?” Andrei barked in full on protector mode.
“Because they’ve got prisoners and I told them to go put them in the timeout cooler and would you men, please, stop barking at me. I’ve had enough of that today to last me a lifetime.”
Andrei’s response was quick and not without amusement. To him. Not her. “No man handles his woman being in danger well.”
“I’m not his woman, I’m his ex-wife. The one he ditched so he could run off and play hero and I don’t want to have to explain why I’m on the phone with a well-known Russian drug lord, arms dealer, and human trafficker. So please, Andrei, tell me what you know.”
“From the video you sent me, it looks like Sanjay is after you.”
“You know them. Good guys or—”
“Bad. Mercs. Contract hitters. I assume they’re after you because of the bounty on your head.”
Shock slammed into her. “Bounty? On me? What bounty on me?”
“Congratulations. You’re wanted alive, not dead.”
“Did those jerks get the message? Because they were firing live rounds.”
Andrei growled. “Sanjay’s not known for hiring the brightest tools in the shed. Are you injured?”
“No. We got away clean, but… please, tell me everything you know. Van and Caliv are both keeping me in the dark.”
“One to protect you. The other out of ignorance.”
“But you know. Don’t you,” she accused.
“I shouldn’t tell you.” He gave a resigned sigh. “Rutger Dillon.”
She was shocked. “Him again? Didn’t my father kill him like nine times already?”
“I wish,” Andrei muttered. “Dillon got his hands on the Nexus Suit.”
Another sucker punch to the gut. “Wait. What? How? That… was destroyed. Van fried it and I shut down the program then gave it to Sinclair with his promise it would be destroyed.”
“Did Sinclair use the word destroyed or was it just assumed that’s what he’d do?”
She paused to recall the exact conversation. “His exact words were that he’d take care of it.”
Andrei snorted his disbelief. “More like he’d take care of it until it suited his game.” He paused. “You need to find out what Sinclair has up his sleeve for the device. I expect—knowing him—that he’s using it as bait to find out the source of corruption in your husband’s chain of command.”
“Sinclair already knows. I gave him everything.”
“Apparently not everything,” Andrei murmured.
Maddie waved that comment aside. “Enough then. I gave him more than enough to cut it off at the head.”
“One head wouldn’t be enough,” Andrei informed her in that I’m smarter than you older brother type of tone. “Tango’s unit has been tapped and used for more shit than they should have. Someone in a high place is calling the shots and—”
“I know,” Maddie muttered. “That was in the proof I gave Sinclair.”
“If the proof was not concrete and all-encompassing or directly impacted Sinclair’s needs, then he wouldn’t have done shit. Other than sit on it and watch it unfold.”
“There wasn’t much to watch,” Maddie said. “None of those missions had Van and his team wearing the suit.”
“You know why.”
“Yes, but Van doesn’t know I know.”
“Tell him,” Andrei ordered.
“I will.”
“I know that tone.” Andrei sighed. “You or me. I don’t give a good damn which one does it, but Tango will be informed. Tonight.”
“Oh for crying out loud, you are my best friend and, as such, you are required to be on my side. He’s been an ass. A complete ass and—”
“Guilt’s a bitch and she takes no prisoners. Cut him some sl
ack. He came when you needed him.”
Maddie huffed in silence.
“He didn’t abandon you,” Andrei said in a softer tone. “Trust him.”
“Trust him?” Maddie frowned. “He’s holding back. I’ve asked him multiple times to tell me why he’d stayed away and not once did he fess up. How hard could it be?”
“Your logic sucks.”
“Excuse me? My logic makes perfect sense.”
“The hell it does. The only reason you’re so bent out of shape over this is because it’s the one thing you don’t know about his activities since he left. Get the hell over it. It is what it is. Move on. He stayed true, didn’t he?”
She hesitated then answered, “He says he did.”
“Chicken. You know damn well and good he couldn’t lie to you about that.”
“Okay, fine, he stayed true. Are you happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
“But I’m still not forgiving him for thinking he can just up and leave again.”
“Been over this,” Andrei said. “He can’t. Not again. First time nearly killed him. Second would. Definitely.”
“You know, you’re not always right.”
“I am when it comes to this.”
Maddie paused and thought about Andrei’s statement. She had to give it to him. He did know what he was talking about—from his perspective. Of course that perspective was tainted by him actively choosing to let the woman he loved believe he was dead and it’d torn him to shreds doing it, but… okay. Fine. He had a point and knew what he was talking about. “Still doesn’t explain how Rutger Dillon could have gotten his hands on my suit. Sinclair should have destroyed it.”
“It’s Sinclair. Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve’s don’t apply to him. It is what it is and I bet you anything he’s been sitting on that info waiting for the head of the hydra to take the bait.” He paused. “And it worked.”
“Maybe, but… Rutger Dillon? Really? He’s not big enough to be the head of the hydra.”
“Hey, I don’t play ‘em, I just call ‘em as I get ‘em, and my sources say it’s Dillon.”
Maddie shook her head. It didn’t make any sense. Dillon was a small fish trying to play in a big ocean. “Still makes no sense. He’s not even remotely connected to the corruption in Van’s chain of command.”
Devil's Tango (Running with the Devil Book 1) Page 10