Deadly Games

by Cherry Adair

  “It’s the first time my work and personal life have collided. There’s a reason most T-FLAC operatives have no personal lives. This job is all consuming. But it killed me that you believed- Jesus, Hannah, I hoped you knew me.” It killed him that she’d believed the worst of him, despite knowing each other for most of their lives.

  Hannah turned her head to look at him, her hair snagging in his bristly unshaven jaw. “I thought I knew you, too. But boy, was I wrong. I don’t know which man scares me more,” she said quietly. “The Grayson I believed for years was a criminal, or the man I just saw kill several men without hesitation while saying he’s the good guy.”

  Jesus that stung. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”

  Hannah lifted an eloquent brow. “You think it was painless being left at the altar?”

  Ouch.

  He sucked in a breath of her honey and orange blossom shampoo, almost overpowered by the stink of smoke. The good and the ugly. The juxtaposition wasn’t lost on him. “Mitigating circumstances,” he said roughly. This was neither the time nor place to tell her the why of it. Maybe he’d never have that chance, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to waste this moment rehashing what had happened to prevent his returning home to her on time.

  “Maybe sometime I’ll give enough of a damn to ask what they were.” Her hard ass words were ruined by the catch in her voice.

  Ah, Hannah. “I do my job. And I’m good at it. No apologies. What my men and I do matters. It keeps people safe when they aren’t even aware of being in danger. They don’t have to know the who and why of it.”

  She was quiet for several minutes. “That bomb would’ve gone off with us on board. We’re lucky you showed up.”

  Grayson’s smile felt strained. He saw the lights of the city in the distance. Time was almost up. “Colton isn’t going to feel so damned grateful when I strip his skin from his bones.”

  “I’ll help you.” Hannah assured him, then shifted out of his arms, leaving Gray feeling bereft, and cold. She’d always been instinctively tuned into other people’s needs—frequently to the detriment of her own. Had she kissed him because she knew how desperately he needed her? Or was the need her own, as she’d said? Gray used to be able to read her, but not anymore. She’d become adept at masking her innermost feelings.

  And no doubt he could take credit for that. It was as if he’d told her he didn’t believe in fairies, and her light had died.

  Sliding back across the wood bench, she clasped her fingers in her lap, and gave him a steady, unemotional look. They could be strangers. “I imagine you don’t want these men to see you all over me. Go. Do whatever it is you have to do. I’m fine in here.”

  Gray wavered between duty and desire. There was no fucking time to talk it out. No time to mend what he’d broken. He knew where he needed to be, but was also acutely aware of where he wanted to be. Here in this temporary bubble with Hannah. Holding her had been too good to be true. Her long-lashed, big blue eyes looked bruised, and wary. Gray pushed to his feet. He was a fool to think he had a choice. There was none. In less than thirty hours, Stonefish would reign terror on South America. He had to be apprehended and stopped.

  “We’ll be docking at Esmeraldas in a few minutes,” he told her, voice brisk as he got to his feet. “You’ll be on your way home in less than an hour.”

  “What about Colton? What about the Moms’ money which is the whole frigging reason I’m here in the first place?”

  “I have no fucking idea, Hannah,” Frustration, rage, shame, and lust tangled in his gut. “I’ll try and help you sort it out when I’ve done what I came here for.” Stonefish needed those diamonds to pay for the weapons he’d ordered. No diamonds, no weapons.

  No money for Hannah to take home.

  But the principals must have the diamonds somewhere. They wouldn’t have blown the ship without ensuring the stones went with them when they bailed.

  “You know what, Grayson? Go ahead and do your job. And I’ll take care of Colton and the Moms problems as I’ve always done.”

  #

  A car awaited them at the docks. Grayson didn’t bother with the niceties of introducing her to his team. They got in the car, and drove through Esmeraldas, which had rolled up its streets hours ago.

  Kissing him had been a colossal mistake. Hannah knew it before she instigated it. But having shit blow up, men running around shooting at each other, blood and death everywhere, Colton in it up to his eyeballs and Grayson in the mix, made her realize something. If she was going out with a bang, she wanted to be with Grayson when it happened. Even now, she knew she’d kiss him again given half the chance. God. She was screwed up. Hot then cold. She couldn’t get home soon enough, and out of Grayson’s force field.

  Really, at home she- if not hated his guts- felt profoundly. . . negative emotions. Yet the second she saw him after three years, her emotions went haywire and she all but begged him to ravish her. Ravish was a good word.

  Not that there’d be any ravishing in her future. She sighed.

  “Hannah? I asked if you’re okay?”

  She turned to face him. “Don’t ask me questions you don’t want an honest answer to,” she whispered, a snap in her voice she couldn’t help. Cranky and annoyed, she hoped the others with them were completely deaf, as well as oblivious to the thick undercurrent in the car as they bounced over a scrub grass field.

  There was no light, not even headlights. The man who’d piloted the fishing boat, and was now driving, had pulled down what she presumed were night vision glasses as soon as they’d reached the edge of town. She of course, saw nothing but black.

  Just like her relationship with Grayson Burke.

  “Why don’t you guys just drop me at the main terminal, and I’ll see myself home?” Not that she saw a terminal anywhere near where they were. But there must be one. It was an airport.

  Gray’s eyes glittered in the dim lighting inside the vehicle as they pulled up to the dark hulk of a large building. “No money. No passport.”

  Hannah refrained from saying, “Fuck you.”

  Barely.

  CHAPTER NINE - RICOCHET

  When they got out of the vehicle, the interior lights didn’t go on. Hannah stepped out after Gray. Dry grass crunched under her feet. Almost pitch dark, cool, and absolutely still, there wasn’t a breath of wind. A shiver of foreboding raced up her back, damp with nervous perspiration. “Is this why they call it black ops?” she asked facetiously, keeping her voice down because it was freakishly quiet.

  She really, really, really wanted to be home, watching TV in her jammies, eating her Friday night tablespoon of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. She wanted to forget what Colton had dragged her into. She wanted him safely back at the insurance company where he worked. Wanted to re-forget Grayson. She wanted the Moms home from Asia so she could quit managing Provenance Inc.

  She also wanted not to feel like crap, because having hypoglycemic issues really wasn’t convenient right now.

  That was a long list of freaking wants. But that’s about as far as Hannah got. Because she couldn’t think further than getting through this ordeal right now.

  The hangar was about a hundred feet away, an enormous, black square against the night sky. Silently she trudged along between Grayson and a man built like a tank. Two of his men walked in front of her, a male and a female operative behind. All dressed in black, so they pretty much blended into the darkness.

  “Do you think I’ll try and make a break for it? Run across a dark field in a strange town with no money and no identification?” she asked with just a touch of sarcasm.

  “Keep your voice down,” he said so quietly she shouldn’t have been able to hear him, yet even as soft as his voice was, she heard every word. “We don’t know if Stonefish has more of his people around. We’re not taking any chances.”

  Fabulous. Now she felt as though she had a bullseye in the middle of her back. This morning she hadn’t known any spies other than Bourn
e and Bond. Now she was surrounded by the real deal. It seemed a lifetime ago, instead of hours earlier, that she and Colton had boarded the Stone’s Throw, and since then her life had taken a weird, scary turn.

  Being surrounded by Gray’s men was like walking inside the high walls of a black cave. Hannah was relieved when they entered the hangar through a side door. Blinking in the brilliant overhead lights flooding the vast empty space, she wasn’t sorry when the men peeled off. Grayson, however, stayed glued to her side.

  She shot him a glance. Focused and fierce, he strode into the center of the large space, keeping her within reach of his hand even though he didn’t touch her. She always forgot how tall he was until he was standing right next to her. Six three, of disreputable male, with his darkly stubbled jaw, dark, dangerous glower, and the skintight black outfit that displayed his tall, virile physique to perfection. He looked tough, mean and dangerous as hell. “I wouldn’t want to bump into you in a dark alley,” she told him sotto voce, as she sped up to match his long strides.

  It was disconcerting to realize that she didn’t know this Grayson at all.

  “Trust me,” he said, scanning the open space and milling people as if looking for ninjas to jump out from every corner. Which, God only knew, wouldn’t surprise Hannah in the least. “You’d want me with you in that dark alley.”

  She rubbed the faint, annoying headache at her temples with two fingers. “Fortunately, I don’t frequent that many dark alleys.”

  He slanted her a look, gray eyes softening. “I know you’re freaked out by all this, but hang tough, Tink. Stay with me until we can establish who’s who, okay?”

  Now that the danger was past, Hannah realized she wasn’t feeling so hot. Nerves, stress, a bouncing boat. Low blood sugar. Shit. She shrugged. “I have nothing better to do.”

  The hangar was old, and probably not in use. Rusted, corrugated walls, oil-stained cement floor, and a bunch of broken packing crates piled haphazardly in the far corner. Half the overhead lights were burned out or hanging by electrical wires.

  Thirsty, she tuned out the susurrus of multiple conversations, looking around for something to drink.

  A soda would help with her blood sugar until she could get some real food. There didn’t appear to be a vending machine around. But considering the look of the hangar, if there were, anything in it would be petrified by now.

  Other than swarming people, and mounds of windswept leaves and debris in the corners, the space was empty. Just a few large grease spots where planes once sat. Grayson’s men, dressed in identical sleek black get-ups, cowls shoved back, were starting to separate the swarms of people from the ship.

  The process was loud, and she learned a few new swear words, as everyone voiced their opinions more loudly than the guy next to him. It was a big crowd of crazy.

  “The plane will be here soon,” Grayson told her, giving her a small portion of his attention.

  She stepped back. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

  He locked his hand around her wrist. “No, stick to me like white on rice. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  Tempted to remind him that he wasn’t the boss of her in any way, shape or form, Hannah bit her tongue and tugged herself out of his hold. The reality was he was the only man here that she trusted; she just didn’t trust him to touch her.

  Seeing a familiar gleaming, sandy blond head among the crowd, she indicated his brother with a jerk of her chin. “Colton’s over there. God. He looks terrified.”

  “Good,” Gray said unsympathetically. “I don’t want you near him until he’s been processed.”

  “Come on, Grayson. You know he wasn’t aware of who he was dealing with.”

  “No one with half a fucking brain goes into business without knowing everything there is to know about his partners. But let me rephrase that. Would he steal multimillions of dollars from his mother? No. He’s too fucking good for that.”

  Hannah had never heard the suppressed brutality in his voice before, as he said what she’d been thinking. “Would he take you on board a ship half a world away to fucking impress you, but in fact, plop you into the lap of not just a terrorist, but a group of terrorists whose leader is number one on half a dozen countries’ fucking watch lists!”

  “Stop Gray. He didn’t know they were terrorists.” Man, she was so not up to sparring with Grayson right now. She needed all her cylinders firing at full throttle to keep up with him as it was.

  No way to measure her blood sugar since everything she owned was at the bottom of the South Pacific. But if her blurry vision and other symptoms were any indication, it was low.

  “He’s a criminal, Hannah. He stole the Moms’ life savings, and more. The buy in for investors was ten mil a piece- What? You weren’t aware of the full amount?”

  “You must be mistaken. Provenance Inc. is doing well, really well, but they didn’t have that kind of money. I estimated he took somewhere in the region of five million.”

  “Well then he stole the rest from someone else.” Grayson said grimly. “We’ll know after he’s been questioned. Make no mistake, he will be prosecuted, and there’s a damn good chance he’ll spend some formative years behind bars. If nothing else, this should put the fear of God into him, and teach him not to fucking steal, especially from his own family.”

  “That horse bolted out of the stable a long time ago,” Hannah said dryly, really wanting to sit down now. Colton had to be punished, but she just wanted to get through the next few hours before she had the reality check that her friend not only deserved to go to jail, but that she’d be the one pressing charges.

  Gray stopped to talk to a short, muscular, redhead She recognized most of the men she’d seen on board Stone’s Throw. Two of the three men who’d given the impressive presentation about the hotel complex, Elijah Sorenson and William Deeks were each being questioned by several black-clad T-FLAC men, fifty feet apart. They both had their hands cuffed behind their backs, and some sort of hobble around their ankles. By their identical expressions, they were clearly pissed off and uncooperative.

  A dozen crewmembers, dressed in shorts and white shirts with Stone’s Throw insignias on the breast pocket, were similarly hobbled. They all looked unhappy and scared as they were individually questioned in various parts of the hangar.

  Hannah shivered, rubbing her upper arms briskly against the chill. She wanted Gray’s arms around her. Or a big fluffy blanket. No blanket in sight, and of course he didn’t touch her. Maybe it was better he didn’t.

  “Copy that. Tell him he’s on his own in this clusterfuck. Kyatta and Bren Edde to me. Out.” he said with ill suppressed anger to whoever was talking to him in his earpiece. “Colton’s asking for you,” he told her, the anger still a dark thread in his voice.

  “I have absolutely no desire to see him. Ever, as a matter of fact. That’s probably going to mess up Thanksgiving dinners,” she added dryly as he continued walking, expecting her to catch up, “but I’ll live with that.” She had to practically jog to keep up with Gray’s long strides.

  Hannah knew at any minute another of his men would need him for something, and he’d forget she was there. “What are you going to do with all these people?”

  “Question them here, then transport them to Montana.”

  “Montana?”

  “T-FLAC Headquarters.”

  She pretty much knew they wouldn’t be taking a detour to Chicago to drop her off. She didn’t feel so hot. All she wanted was to get as far away from what was going on, eat, and sleep. She needed to eat. Soon. The adrenaline had worn off, and she was feeling shaky and weak.

  Gray stopped in his tracks, turned and searched her face, then frowned as he cupped her cheek. “You’re cold and clammy.”

  She tilted her head a little so her cheek rested in his warm palm, like a sleepy kitten. “That sounded like an accusation.”

  “Fuck. You gave yourself a shot just before I found you, and you haven’t eaten. Your blood sugar’s dropping
, isn’t it?”

  She’d timed her shot just before dinner. But dinner had never happened. She didn’t have any way to test her blood glucose level, but she knew it was way too low. She should’ve eaten hours ago.

  As much as she wanted to rest her face in his palm like a pet for a few hours, Hannah stepped out of reach. “We’ve been a little busy. But getting something to eat soon would be good.”

  “Anyone got any hard candy?” he said into his comm, which earned him a few surprised glances from the operatives. “We’ve got a diabetic here. She needs something. Search everyone again. Candy. Gum. Anything.”

  “Thanks,” she said quietly.

  “How bad do you feel?”

  “Get me that candy,” she said calmly, rubbing the headache at her temple with fingers that shook.

  He touched the comm as Kyatta and Bren Edde strode toward him. “Find me that fucking candy, people!”

  CHAPTER TEN - RICOCHET

  “While we’re waiting, let’s find the people you overheard, and see who this Savrov insulted by using his name,” Gray told her. He touched his ear. “Bring me a guy called Savrov.”

  “They were going to kill him, maybe he’s dead,” Hannah reminded him.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think there was enough time between when you overhead them and when I found you. I believe the men you overheard were the two I saw in the corridor.”

  “Get the lead out, people! Where the fuck is Savrov?” Gray said into his communications devise.

  It took several minutes, but there was, apparently, no Savrov in the hangar. Everyone was accounted for.

  Feeling a little light-headed, Hannah rubbed her upper arms, not sure if she was hot or cold. “He could’ve been one of the people that were left dead on the ship.”

  “Strong possibility on that. Hang on a sec. I don’t see Mauro, did he make it?” Grayson asked tightly into the comm, then listened to the response. Easier than yelling across the enormous space, Hannah knew, but she would’ve liked to know more than just half the conversation. And even that was in some form of verbal shorthand.