Roxanne St. Claire - Barefoot With a Bad Boy (Barefoot Bay Undercover #3)

by Roxanne St Claire

  Instinctively, the both ducked low.

  “Those are the bastards who did this to me.”

  “They have to pass us,” she said, reaching for the bomb. “Even if they stay on the beach, they have to pass us. Please, Gabe. I can make it, and you can’t.” She looked from him to the bomb and lifted her brows. “They’ll be here in seconds.”

  Damn right they would. And at this hour, the beach was absolutely deserted. It was the right thing to do, if he were doing it.

  “Drop it to me after I climb over and jump down there.” She ran the rail. “And cover me with this.” She held out a pistol.

  He took another ragged breath. “You could die.”

  “I would, for you.”

  His heart ripped in half. Just tore right down the middle, and all the distrust he’d locked up in there poured out and left him. “Lila…”

  But she was already flinging a leg over the railing. Without a second’s hesitation, she let herself drop to the grass about six feet below. Then she held her arms up. “Give me the bomb, Gabe.”

  He leaned all the way over and prayed this wasn’t the stupidest thing he’d ever done. What if it went off while she was holding it?

  “Gabe!”

  He swallowed.

  “You have to trust me,” she said. “You can’t do everything alone. You have to trust me.”

  He glanced up and saw the two men tearing across a deserted beach. Without giving himself any more time to think, he opened his hand and let an explosive drop into the hands of the woman he loved. And trusted.

  “Cover me!” She vaulted away, tucking the bomb under her arm like she was a damn runningback headed for the end zone.

  He cocked the gun and braced himself and his firing hand, ignoring all the pain, all the fear, and all the possibility that this could go wrong. Instead, he watched the two men and saw the very instant one of them caught sight of Lila running toward them.

  One reached for a gun, and Gabe took a shot, hitting his arm and knocking him down. As he fell, Lila lifted both hands, swung them back over her head, and pitched that motherfucker with every ounce of strength in her body and some he hadn’t even thought she had. It sailed at least thirty feet and landed at their feet.

  Within a millisecond, the sand lit up with the small but deadly explosion, sending rocks, shells, sparks, and fire over the empty beach, shaking Barefoot Bay with a jolt.

  The same jolt that rocked Gabe when she turned and looked at him from the sand, then started running back to him. She reached the wall of the poolside, and he bent over, offering his two hands.

  “Come here, Lila. Come here.”

  She hoisted herself up with ease and fell into his arms.

  Somewhere a siren screamed, people ran, and security guards started shouting. But Lila just put her head on Gabe’s shoulder where it belonged.

  One unit. One thing. One…one.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Gabe looked down at the head of an eagle behind a shield, part of the massive seal stamped on the lobby floor of the Central Intelligence Agency, and gave Lila’s hand a squeeze. Their footsteps fell into rhythm but slowed as they walked over the very spot in this universe where their paths first crossed.

  “You were looking down the day I met you,” he said.

  “And you walked right into me. On purpose.”

  He leaned into her. “I just wanted to touch you. To see if you were real.”

  She smiled up at him. “And?”

  “You are so real, blondie. And so ready to kick some CIA butt.”

  She sighed as they neared the reception desk. “I don’t want to kick butts. I’m just going to give them the answers they want and hopefully get a few of my own. I want them to stop this horrible practice if it’s happening to other agents. And I want to be free to tell our son the truth of who he is and who his grandparents were.”

  “Lila! Lila.”

  They both turned at the sound of a man’s voice, seeing the slow-moving silhouette of Dexter Crain emerging through glass doors toward them.

  Gabe stiffened, but Lila’s instinct was different. She broke free to reach out her arms to the senator. They’d talked but hadn’t seen each other in the weeks that had passed since the events unfolded in Barefoot Bay.

  Crain and Lila gave each other a silent embrace while the older man pressed his cheek to hers. Gabe stood back and waited to see how this man treated the woman who killed his wife.

  “I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude,” Crain whispered.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I so wish it could have been different, Dex. I know you loved her.”

  His shoulders sank. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I loved the woman I thought she was, the mother of my children. But she was never who she said she was, and I am just so…” His eyes finally met Gabe’s. “Betrayed,” he admitted.

  Gabe knew the feeling so well, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching his hand out. “You have my sympathies, Senator. Gabriel Rossi.”

  “Hard to believe we’ve never met, Mr. Rossi.” Dex gave him a solid handshake. “I’ve heard much about your colorful career as a contract agent.”

  There might have been a little sarcasm around the world colorful, but that only ratcheted up Gabe’s opinion of the man. Considering how low that opinion had been, it didn’t take much. “And I’ve heard a lot about your colorful career as a senator.”

  He got a touché half smile in return. “I suppose I won’t be a senator much longer, as you might suspect. Handing in my resignation after this meeting.” He nodded toward the elevator where they were headed. “Then I’ll spend some time licking my wounds and wondering how a man could be so blind.”

  “Don’t,” Lila said, taking his arm as they walked.

  Gabe flanked the other side. “A wise man once told me that it’s very easy to believe a woman is who you want her to be because she happens to be who you need her to be.”

  “Sounds like Nino,” Lila said.

  Dex gave a soft laugh. “There’s truth in what you’re saying, but hard to accept when you’re the dummy who lived with a Russian sleeper agent for a lifetime.”

  “Oh, Dex,” Lila said, pulling him closer. “Maybe you can write a book and get it out of your system.”

  “They’ll never let me.” He poked the elevator button. “What about you, young lady? What are your plans?”

  “I’m going back to Barefoot Bay to let Gabe and Rafe get to know one another.”

  He looked from one to the other as the elevator door opened. “So everything’s out in the open?” He turned to Gabe with an unwavering gaze. “I shouldn’t have encouraged her to leave Cuba, son. She was happy.”

  Fat lot of good that did now.

  “Is there any way I can make it up to you?” he asked Gabe as the elevator doors opened to their floor.

  “As a matter of fact…” Gabe shot a look to Lila. “Why don’t you go in and do the small talk, Lila? That meeting won’t start until Hollings shows up, and I guarantee you he’s not ten minutes early, like we are. The senator and I will be in shortly.”

  She gave a hesitant frown to Gabe and then the senator. “Are you sure?”

  Dex put his hand on her shoulder. “Give me this time and chance, Lila. I want to talk to him.”

  “Okay.” She patted his hand and reached out to Gabe. “It would be nice if you two could be friends.”

  “We’ll start small,” Gabe said, giving a light kiss to her hair. “Save me a seat next to you so you’re able to hear me mock those idiots.”

  When she left, Gabe turned back to Dexter. “I need a favor, Dex.”

  The senator gave a quizzical look. “If I’m capable of favors anymore.”

  “I think you can do this.” Gabe nudged him down the hall and reached into his pocket. “This way.”

  *

  Of course, there was small talk and coffee, and nobody said anything that mattered until the director showed up. Lila recognized some faces
among the eight or ten attendees, but definitely not all. The moment Director Jeffrey Hollings entered, they all grew silent in the presence of the leader of the CIA.

  Gabe sauntered in behind him, came up to Lila with a slow smile, and took her hand. Without a word, he guided them to chairs next to each other along the side of the massive mahogany table in the middle of the room.

  Dexter was MIA, but Hollings took a seat at the head of the table. The director was a salt-and-pepper handsome fifty-year-old with clear blue eyes and an air of unquestionable authority.

  Except, Lila had a feeling Gabe would have no problem questioning it.

  After a moment, Hollings gave a nod to Lila. “For the benefit of this group, Ms. Wickham, can you recount your entire story?”

  Next to her, Gabe gave a soft grunt of displeasure. That didn’t take long.

  “Is that a problem, Mr. Rossi?”

  “It’s a waste of time,” Gabe shot back. “You know her story. You know my story. You know poor dead David Foster’s story, although we don’t. So why don’t we start there?”

  Hollings didn’t flinch. “Agent Foster was sent by me to warn Ms. Wickham of a credible threat we learned of through classified means.”

  Gabe angled his head as if classified means held no weight with him. Hollings ignored it and continued.

  “I told Senator Crain that we were sending Foster. The senator’s phone was compromised by Mrs. Crain, who launched the series of events that we’re discussing. Foster received texts to go to the harbor, unwittingly walking into a plan to make it look like he’d killed both of you in a shootout, but you foiled that plan. The texts you were receiving weren’t from him.”

  One of the analysts across the table let out a sigh. “Sevtronics has world-class devices.”

  “Why don’t we get some of them?” Gabe asked.

  Hollings gave Gabe a harsh look. “As you know, our sole means of infiltrating that company didn’t end well.”

  It ended with Gabe killing the CEO’s stepdaughter, Lila thought.

  “But we are grateful for the work you both did,” Hollings added quickly. “Frankly, we’d known for years that there was a mole somewhere at the congressional level, and we now know that was Anne Crain. We were looking for Russian intelligence agents, not individual associated with the siloviki. But they are sly. The two men who were killed on the beach have been identified as Russians associated with that organization, and we now know that they even made Mrs. Crain’s legitimate-looking reservation appear through the resort booking service.”

  “What’s the retribution from Moscow?” Lila asked.

  “According to our agents on the ground, the Russians are distancing themselves from this. The siloviki are not government sanctioned and work entirely independently of Putin or any Russian intelligence agency.”

  “Who was Anne, really?” Lila inched forward, anxious to have this question answered.

  “She was Eva Solov, the cousin of Viktor Solov, head of Sevtronics. Eva was ‘killed’ years ago, but she managed to get to Canada, where she assumed her new identity as Anne Porter. Her assignment was simply to get to Washington, DC, and, in the most calculating and strategic way, attach herself to the most powerful people she could.”

  “She certainly did that.” Dexter Crain walked into the room carrying a large cardboard storage box that he dropped onto the table. Without explanation, he took the closest chair and pinned his gaze on Director Hollings. “Anne Porter came after me when I was a freshman congressman, and I never knew what hit me. I don’t know what secrets she managed to get from me in more than two decades of marriage, but she was clearly a stealthy, skilled sleeper agent.”

  Grief tinged his voice, though Lila knew Dex well enough to know he was working hard to hide that. Poor man. This had ended so much worse than just a tarnished reputation; he’d lost the woman he loved, and the woman he thought loved him.

  Hollings finally nodded. “The whole system failed,” he said, his tone gentle for the first time since they started.

  In other words, it wasn’t the fault of one besotted young congressman.

  “Her instructions were quite simple,” one of the other deputies added, checking his notes. “She was told to wait until they had something they wanted her to do, until she could be at the right time and the right place for the right reasons.” He shifted his gaze to Lila. “That all happened with you because of your relationship with Mr. Rossi, who had become a target of Solov’s. Lila, you became the puppet to get to him, and your friendship with Dexter was one of the strings they used to get you where they wanted you.”

  “Using the implant?”

  Hollings shifted ever so slightly in his seat. “That made sure you didn’t have the opportunity to get emotionally attached to anyone else.”

  “I could have done that,” Gabe muttered, squeezing her hand under the table.

  “And now, Ms. Wickham,” the director said. “After a few more questions for research and file purposes, we’d like to close this chapter of CIA history forever.”

  Gabe leaned forward. “Not so fast.”

  Hollings answered with the rise of one black brow.

  “Lila Wickham is really Isadora Winter.”

  Hollings didn’t react.

  “And she deserves the right and privilege to share that information with anyone she chooses, with impunity.”

  The director took in a breath as if he were about to launch into his argument, but Dexter slammed his hands on the table. “I agree.”

  Every eye turned to him.

  “Senator?” Hollings asked. “Your reputation is on the line as much as the CIA’s if the program that she participated in becomes public.”

  “The program she participated in cost her dearly,” Dex replied. “And let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we?” He stood slowly and pointed to one of the agents at the table. “That man has headaches, doesn’t he?”

  The agent swallowed and gave a quick look to Hollings.

  “And that agent right there?” He pointed to another woman. “She was working undercover in Crimea after the Russian invasion, took sick, and has had severe headaches since she’s returned to her family. That’s why they’re here, isn’t it? Your questions are not for research and file purposes, but because they suffered the same way Lila did.”

  “No.” Lila lifted her hands to her mouth to contain any noise, her gaze falling on the other woman, who met Lila’s gaze.

  “There is an open investigation,” Hollings confirmed.

  “To do what?” Lila demanded.

  “To prevent it from happening to others.”

  “And that’s where I come in,” Gabe said.

  “Excuse me?” Hollings asked.

  Gabe pointed to the box. “In that container is every form of identification that ever belonged to Isadora Winter, from her birth to her fake death, along with the official documents for a child by the name of Gabriel Rafael Rossi Winter.” He threw a look at Lila. “That’s a mouthful.”

  She bit back a smile, not at all sure where he was going but so in for the ride.

  “We want it back. We want to own those papers and have the right to share them with our son and our family. We want the right to tell our son, and anyone else we choose to trust, who his grandparents were, what work his mother did to make this country safer, and what she sacrificed to do that work. That’s what we want.”

  Hollings flattened him with a dark look. “That is not going to happen, Mr. Rossi.”

  “Really.” Gabe reached into his pocket and pulled something out, cupping it in his palm.

  “You’ve already turned over the implant, Mr. Rossi,” Hollings said.

  “And yet, I still have a bargaining chip, so to speak.” He opened his palm, revealing a flash drive. “With the help of my sister, who, by the way, you would be damn lucky to get as an agent, I have compiled a mountain of files I was able to withdraw when I left Russia many years ago.”

  He put the drive on
the table. “That might contain the names of every single employee at Sevtronics, passwords to their computer files, a database of projects, including the work of the nano implant microchip devices, a list of individuals authorized to surgically implant those devices, and how they function. There’s also home addresses and cell phone numbers to every member of the siloviki, past and present, a list of favored vodka distributors, and some private numbers for the Moscow escort services that the CEO liked to hire.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Would you like any of that information, Jeff?”

  For a long moment, no one said a word or moved. Except Lila, whose heart was beating and soaring in a way that simply couldn’t be natural. Gabe had done this for her. He understood how important it was, and somehow—with the help of Dex, it seemed—had done this for her.

  She glanced again at the two agents, closing her eyes when the man rubbed his temples as if the headaches were still occurring.

  Finally, Hollings stood. “Give her the box,” he said, holding out his hand to Gabe. “And I’ll take that.”

  Gabe stood and dropped the flash drive into the other man’s hand, but grabbed his fingers before they could be withdrawn. “Don’t let anyone else suffer because of this,” Gabe ordered. “Including the two other agents in the room.”

  At the other end of the table, Dexter stood. “I would be happy to personally supervise that project,” he said. “In fact, I will supervise it.”

  His jaw clenched, Hollings nodded and, without another word, walked out of the conference room. Everyone sat in a second of silence and then burst into spontaneous applause.

  All but Lila, who reached up and hugged Gabe and kissed him on the cheek.

  For the next hour, after saying good-bye to Dex, Gabe talked to high-level deputies, and Lila sat huddled with the two agents, sharing stories. One had an implant removed; the other risked brain damage to get his out. Some of the information they now had access to from Gabe’s files could help the doctors with surgery and treatment.

  When they were finished, she and Gabe left the conference room and stepped into the elevator. He carried the box, and they stayed silent until the doors opened and they walked through the iconic lobby, side by side.