by Lola Feri
"Wait."
"What?"
"Are you ready?"
"Of course I am," I said, stung. He'd been working with me every day for a month, and if he couldn't see that, there was something very wrong.
"No. Are you ready to be taking orders from me in the field? This isn't arguing over a training mission."
"Of course I am," I repeated, stalking upstairs to my room. Nothing had changed. I was going to prove myself to the agency. Garrett would make the right calls like he always did and it would be a success.
Of course it would.
CHAPTER SIX
Garrett
In the agency we don't have to worry about check-in or security before they flew us coach to France. Ryland took the window seat, curling up and falling asleep as soon as we were in the air, and God help me, I couldn't stop looking at him.
He was dressed a little nicer than usual, a button down shirt and slacks instead of his jeans and T-shirts. The tinted glasses helped camouflage his noticeable eye color without restricting his vision too much. He looked like a drowsy grad student on his way to a foreign job posting.
No, he looks delicious, and you know it.
I couldn't decide if I was grateful for the call that came first thing in the morning, or if I was furious about it. I hadn't slept after Ryland went back to his room. Instead, I lay awake in my bed, morosely watching the sky lighten outside my window.
A nagging voice told me that being on this mission was the wrong choice. We might have been ready before I spilled my guts and let my asset kiss me, but afterward was a different story.
Tell the truth and shame the devil, it wasn't just that he had kissed me, but that I kissed him back, and I knew at the center of my soul that it was one of the best kisses I had ever had. Ryland kissed me with his entire body, every bit of eagerness evident in his body. It was as if a switch flipped in my head, or maybe something awoke inside that had been dormant for far too long.
I listened as he made dirty remarks to me for days. That night at the steak restaurant, feeling his hand on my thigh, had been the closest I’d come to even thinking there was something there. As I said, Ryland making a big joke out of sex was one thing.
Ryland stretching out on my bed, looking up at me as if there was no one and nothing else in his world, did something to me. Still did something to me, if I were honest about it. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt we shouldn't touch each other like that again, and I knew it in the exact same way that I knew I wanted to.
I had known other gay men, and even had an odd man make a pass at me, both on the job and at home. It didn't bother me. No man, hell, no woman had ever made me wake up like Ryland Cortez had, and on the long flight to France, I kept sneaking glances at him.
He was good-looking enough, with a charm that didn't really come through in the photos I had seen of him before we met. He had dark hair and those uncanny yellow eyes, and of course I had gotten to know his lean body better than I knew most lovers while watching him train. Now that I thought of his body, I couldn't stop remembering how it looked when he began stretching, running and fighting. I had worked with him for a month without a single inappropriate thought, and now that was a thing of the past.
What would it be like to kiss him again? What would it be like to do more...?
I shook myself, more than a little disturbed by what was going on in my head. Right now, I should be focused on the mission. If Ryland was the gun, I was the sharpshooter. He would be relying on me to give him the tools he needed to excel. I knew he trusted me.
Resolutely, I started to review the maps of the area. If anyone was watching, they would think I was one more tourist worried about seeming like a rube. Instead, I went over the maps again and again, memorizing street names and squares, making sure I knew the ground as well as I could.
Ryland was depending on me, and if I failed, he could die.
I refused to fail, and I also refused to look at him again.
***
It was unseasonably warm in Marseilles. The March temperature had spiked to eighty. We were crammed in the surveillance van with our French team, so it was probably 10 to 15 degrees warmer for us.. I ignored the discomfort and the watchful attitudes of my French counterparts in favor of staring at the small screen in front of me.
The mission was a simple one, even if the stakes were high. We were meant to be watching a drop, money for guns. It would have been well below our pay grade except for the fact that Drago Marcone was meant to be there. The man was wanted in eight countries for ties to various criminal organizations, and our orders were clear. Capture if we could, kill if necessary. The agency would have very much preferred to take Drago alive, but even dead he would upset the power balance in a few key areas.
From the surveillance van, we had eyes on most of the street. We had landed in Marseilles just four hours ago. An hour before dawn, Ryland had taken his spot in an abandoned apartment above the busy thoroughfare below. According to our intel, the drop was meant to take place in the market right below Ryland's perch. The busy intersection full of people running around on their daily business would make it easy for the two groups to exchange the guns and the cash.
There was another team ready to intercept him after the drop, but Ryland and I were insurance. One way or another Drago wasn't walking away clean.
Surveillance work is dull until it's not. All of our operatives in the field had cameras attached to their earpieces, giving us their point of view on the street. I scanned all of them, but time after time, my eyes returned to what Ryland was seeing. He was perfectly steady, easy to mistake for a standard CCTV camera if it wasn't for the way he scanned the street from time to time.
"They're coming."
Ryland's voice in my ear was soft and toneless, unlike his usual speech.. It was as if he had pushed everything down until only this skilled killer was left.
Off his camera, I saw a group of men appear at one end of the alley. They were dressed roughly, like the ones who delivered shipments of tomatoes and lettuce to the restaurants first thing in the morning. The crates they carried looked heavy though. Through Ryland's camera, I could see what he did, namely the alert looks in their eyes and the bulge of holstered guns under their jackets.
The gun runners would be a good catch for the French division of the agency, but that isn’t why we were here. Ryland kept scanning the crowd, looking for Drago and his men. That was the prize. I could hear Ryland’s slow and steady breathing.
This is where Ryland excelled. Even his worst handlers agreed. An excellent marksman, he could sort through a crowd quickly, and identify hostiles from bystanders. Some small and guilty part of me was eager to see him work. I trusted him, and he trusted me. We would make this work, and we would be fine.
"Drago and his men incoming," said another operative who had eyes on the east end of the market. "Blue shirt, accompanied by four men."
I didn't blink as I followed Ryland's gaze, sorting out who-was-who, finally landing on Drago. It was easy to see once you knew what to look for.
Drago, a thin man with slicked back black hair had a surprisingly mournful face. He walked quickly, but jittery. If I was doing a drop for weapons in the middle of a market, I would be jittery too.
"Shit," Ryland said in my earpiece, sharp enough to make me flinch.
I felt that cold calm drape over me. It was armor, something that could keep me crisp and cold while I figured out what had to be done.
"What is it? Cortez, report."
The screen in front of me, showing what Ryland saw, was focused on Drago at first. Then, inexplicably, Ryland started scanning up and down the street. It took me a moment to realize he was trying to spot our own teams, and I barked his name again.
"Cortez!"
"That ain't Drago," he said flatly, and that was when an op teetering on the brink of insanity went completely to hell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ryland
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br /> I didn't look all that close at first. I sighted the guys with guns, and then I watched for the asshole they were meeting. We didn't have a lot of intel on what Drago looked like. There were a few sketches, a few descriptions. He was skinny, dark hair, dark eyes, mostly white, no scars. With a description that matched more than half the men in Marseilles, I was looking for other identifying features
I saw the Drago's escort before my eyes fell on Drago himself, They were big men, powerfully built with a dead look in their eyes. The people in the crowd parted for them. They had no idea what this little group was, but something told random passersby that they were trouble.
Turns out they really needed the intimidation factor because Drago brought none along himself. He curled his shoulders and craned his neck to look around. From where I sat, I could see the rim of terrified white around his dark irises, and then I realized I wasn't looking at Drago at all.
"Shit," I growled, and Garrett had to call me to attention twice before I responded to him. I was looking for our guys, looking for a way to make sure they weren't getting ready to close in.
"That ain't Drago," I said. I started to spit out the explanation when the guys with the crates started forward to meet dumb little Miklos Nagy and his escort. No, not his escort! Not by the way they were flanking him. His captors.
He was shit scared and I realized he had a lot of reasons to be.
"This isn't a drop, it's a goddamn ambush," I growled into my earpiece, watching as one of the assholes with the crate drew a gun.
Garrett was saying something in my ear, something frantic and furious, but I acted before I thought twice. My draw is faster than my brain, and I took the shot.
It all happened at once. The asshole with the gun cried out, falling to the ground and clutching his arm. His buddies lunged for their guns, the guys around Miklos reached for theirs, and in the middle of all of that, Jakob Nagy's little brother stood like the world's biggest booby prize.
I sighted our teams finally, as the crowd panicked and started to stampede. They were plain clothed and were the only ones running towards the action rather than away from it.
Garrett demanded to know why I'd fired my gun. What the hell was I doing? With an exasperated growl, I tore my headset off and climbed up on the window sill. From the sill, it was a two story drop to the street, but there was an awning that could cushion my descent. Garrett had had me climbing all over worse sites with a 70 pound encumbrance. Below was the street, now boiling with people. As I watched, someone grabed up her kid, tucking him under her arm like a baguette and getting the hell out of Dodge. . I took the drop easily, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I wryly thanked Garrett for his insistence on conditioning and parkour. I made my way through the crowd, my pistol out and lowered at my side. No one gave me a second glance. By then the assholes with the guns, the assholes who had brought Miklos Nagy to the ambush, and the assholes who worked the French teams, were fighting it out, most of them probably confused about what the hell had gone wrong.
With my free hand, I grabbed Miklos hard by the wrist and pulled him after me.
"Ryland?"
"Shut up!" I growled. "Not the time!"
I hauled him into a nearby bakery. There were people who had come to take shelter behind the counter, and they looked at me with wide eyes.
"The back. Is there a door?" I demanded in the best French I could muster, and one lady pointed the way nervously.
She'd be better thanked by having me and Miklos out of the bakery, so I just nodded curtly and kept running, hand locked around Miklos's wrist.
The door opened into a narrow alley, with enough space between two buildings for us to snake through. From the next street I heard the fire from where we had come from, more distant now.
I kept going, ignoring Miklos' demand for an explanation of what the hell happened, and dragged him for another three blocks. By the time I holstered my gun and covered it up, the hand I had around his wrist was cramping up. I looked around, and saw a small cafe with seating off the street, and we walked in.
I had some euros in my pocket, fortunately, and paid for our coffee.
"Okay," I said. "What the hell, Miklos?"
He stared at me, and I wondered all over again how two men with the same parents who looked a great deal like each other could turn out so differently. Miklos was pale and sweaty, hands moving quick as if he would have died for a cigarette, and Jakob hadn't been shaken when I put a gun to his head.
"Does Jakob know you're in Europe again?" he asked. I scowled at him.
"No, and Big Brother doesn't need to know, does he?" I snapped. "This has nothing to do with him... wait, does it?"
Jakob was a cold-blooded killer, but then most of the people I knew were. He was ruthless, mean as a snake and brutal when he needed to be, but he cared for his family, even for Miklos, who could barely tie his shoes.
Miklos blushed angrily.
"This has nothing to do with Jakob," he started, and right away I knew that was the problem, Jakob would never sign off on a plan this goddamn stupid.
As it turned out, Miklos had fallen in with a branch of Drago's people. Someone had decided to flush out Drago's enemies by giving out that Drago himself was going to be at the drop. The agency had gotten wind of it because we were supposed to. Everyone was supposed to, and once Drago's enemies were in the open, Drago's men would strike. They probably hadn't expected the agency to show up when it did, but it was all the same to them.
"Dear fuckin' God, what a mess," I groaned. "You need to get the fuck out of France."
Miklos was finally beginning to look worried after being so panicked.
"I don't have any money," he said as a matter of fact. But neither did I. I didn't carry cash or ID on a mission where I was supposed to be invisible. Garrett had all of that, and I couldn't see him handing it all over to me with Miklos hovering nearby.
"Shit. You're going to have to call Jakob."
Miklos blanched at that, looking worse than he did when he was sandwiched between people who wanted to kill him, and people who didn't care if he died.
"No, no, no fucking way..."
"Then let Drago put a bullet in your head after you disappear from your sacrifice. I don't give a shit."
"I don't have my phone on me," he said plaintively. I wanted to slam his face into the table. Instead, I shook my head.
"Meet me behind the cafe. Five minutes."
As he skulked his way out of the cafe, I looked around the cafe casually. I had ditched the tac vest on the run, and it left me in a thin jacket, black t-shirt and black jeans. Easy enough.
"Hey," I said in French, glancing over at an older man typing away. I pointed at his laptop. "That a Lenovo?'
He looked surprised to be addressed at all, and proceeded to tell me the finer points of his laptop, I slipped his phone (sat behind his laptop screen) into my pocket.
When I found Miklos again in the alley, I tossed him the phone. "Call right the fuck now, and after you get a pickup confirmation from Jakob, ditch it."
"Thank you," Miklos said, his eyes suspiciously wet. "I can't thank you enough..."
"Don't mention it," I said shortly. "To anyone."
Christ, the last thing I needed after this shit show was to let fucking Jakob Nagy know I was still around.
I got my bearings and started making my way to the safe house, knowing who was waiting for me there, and the last thing I wanted was to put it off longer.
***
I beat Garrett back to the crappy little apartment in the warehouse district. When I realized I was the only one in the space, I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt something dark and heavy hanging over me, something new and extremely unwelcome. I never felt like this after my worst fuckups, but it occurred to me that I had never fucked up this bad before.
Somehow in the past, I had always saved the mission. I might get suspended, I might have three broken ribs and nearly go
tten my throat slit, but in the end, I had produced results. One way or another, even if the accountants were pissed at the collateral damage, or the casualty count was higher than it should have been, I saved the day.
I had never been in an unmitigated fuck up like this one before... and of course I had done it when I was working with the best handler they had ever given me. I now realized what bothered me way more than the idea of failing the agency or anything like that.
I wondered if Garrett was going to get mean, if he'd beat the shit out of me or slam me into the wall. It wasn't his style, I decided. He'd be more likely to tell me in droning detail exactly every mistake I made along the way before bouncing my ass straight out of the agency entirely. He was a company man, and I certainly hadn't been acting with the company in mind when I made my decisions.
I sat at the rickety kitchen table, trying to ignore the voice that told me to just book it, to disappear into Marseilles, and spend the rest of my born days avoiding the agency at all costs. It could be done, but the question of being found was when and not if.
Finally, sometime after sundown, the door creaked open, and Garrett appeared. He glanced at me, and I stared at the black eye he somehow picked up while I wasn't looking.
“Jesus...”
“Is the place clear?”
“Clean as a whistle,” I responded, still staring at him.
He leaned against his cane a little heavier than usual. When Garrett got to the table, he sat down clumsily as if he was grateful to be off his feet. I wanted to say something to him, maybe about how I had fucked up and I wouldn't do it again, but shit, I couldn't even promise that, could I?
I waited tensely for him to talk, but when he did, he surprised me again.