by Lora Leigh
So long. The same month her mother had been killed in Nicaragua. Francine had called her parents out of desperation at that time, begging them to help her to send someone for her and her daughter. Sorrel had been so close, Tehya had learned, to both their locations.
Less than twenty-four hours later Bernard Taite had been killed in a hit-and-run on a Paris street. The next day his wife had been found in their bedroom, dead from an apparent overdose.
And her mother had died at the hands of a madman determined to find Tehya for reasons she still didn’t completely understand.
Sorrel claimed she was the child he had promised to his son, her half-brother. That all she had to do was return to him and he’d ensure she didn’t suffer her mother’s fate.
For months, Tehya had contemplated simply giving up and taking her own life. So many people had died trying to protect her that she hadn’t dared contact Stephen Taite, her grandfather’s brother. She had been terrified Sorrel would kill him and the rest of her family as well.
“After all these years do they actually believe I would contact my family?” she asked softly, keeping her back to the others as she laid the mugs out and pulled sugar and powdered creamer from another cabinet.
“When you aided the authorities in France in bypassing Sorrel’s computer security and locating the underground rooms in which he kept the young girls and women he kidnapped, your identity as his and Francine Taite’s daughter was revealed to the authorities,” Lilly continued. “I know for a few years Stephen tried to contact you, to learn if you were indeed the Taite heir, but you never answered the messages he sent to you through the French authorities.”
Tehya shook her head as she turned back to them, hoping she now had her emotions in check.
“I replied and I told him that I wasn’t related to him,” she said. “That he needed to search elsewhere for his niece and her daughter. He never tried to contact me after that but I had to leave days later when an assassin attempted to get to me while I was still at the estate.”
She hoped he had accepted her denial of their kinship. Her grandparents had been murdered because of their determination to help her and her mother. She had no desire to have more of her family killed, or to put them at more risk than when her mother contacted her own father.
“Evidently someone is aware of the connection, though, and believes you will make contact,” Lilly said. “I suspect thats why Arthur and Tenneyson are watching him while I suspect others have been keeping tabs on you.”
“The report our contact received states that there seems to be a rumor that you’ve been working as an agent for the goverment since leaving France until you were dismissed just before you staged your death.” Amusement gleamed in Bailey’s eyes. “Quite the industrious little thing, aren’t you?”
“So it would appear,” she murmured with a grimace as Jordan, John, and Travis came to the counter for the coffee.
“So, do we have a plan C,D, and E yet?” Bailey turned to the men, her tone patient and filled with amusement as she stared at them.
Jordan had always trained his men to have more than one plan. Tehya was aware she had shot his plans A and B to hell and back. Evidently the others were aware of it now as well.
“We’re getting there,” John said. The look he gave his wife was one filled with love, devotion.
Tehya had once dreamed of seeing Jordan gaze at her in such a way. It was a dream that had died the morning she left Texas.
It was the same look Travis Caine gave his wife, Lilly. She completed him, and it was more than apparent that he completed her as well. The two couples were the perfect examples of the relationship she had dreamed of having with Jordan.
“What about grabbing Arthur and Tenneyson and allowing Micah to interrogate them?” Tehya suggested, “Surely they would know who hired them?” She wondered if they could get that lucky? God, she just wanted this over this before Sorrel’s men had a chance to hurt her friends as Sorrel had once destroyed anyone who attempted to protect her and her mother.
Including the young nun who had taken her in at the convent just after Tehya had turned six, while her mother had tried to lead Sorrel and his men away from her.
Within months Francine had sent word that Sorrel possibly knew their location. Tehya remembered Sister Mary wakening her, the room so dark she had stumbled as the sister helped her dress, urging her to hurry.
They had left the convent by way of a small tunnel hidden behind the stone wall of the wine cellar in the basement. As they had exited the tunnel into the heavy forest, Tehya had heard gunfire in the distance and a woman’s screams. The remaining nuns had died horribly that night.
Within three years the nun had put Tehya under the protection of a former CIA agent she had known while in college. He had managed to keep Tehya safe for only a few years.
He had been killed mere days after putting her on a bus and sending her across the country to a friend who lived in the Washington mountains.
The same scenario had played out so many times. A short period of peace. Then as soon as she began learning how to sleep without fear, it had begun all over again.
Tehya had been fifteen when she had received word of her mother’s death. After that she had to run on her own. She couldn’t bear to be the cause of anyone else’s death. To see more bloodshed for a child who was no more than a curse to anyone who cared for her.
And now it seemed, the past was returning with a vengeance.
The thought of seeing these men and women risking their lives, the love they had found in each other, for her, was too much to face.
“We would try interrogation, but we have enough suspicion they’re unaware of his identity that at the moment it’s riskier than we’d like. We don’t want to tip them off that we’re aware of them at this point,” Lilly explained.
Tehya clenched her fingers into fists and tried to beat back the fear and the panic. “I can’t deal with this!” The exclamation shocked herself as much as it did the rest of them. “You should all leave. You shouldn’t be here, risking yourselves this way. For God’s sake, go home.”
She didn’t wait for a response from any of them. Walking past the two women, she strode quickly to her bedroom to escape. She couldn’t bear to see the love between the two couples and know what they were risking if they involved themselves in this fight. She’d tried. She’d fought this fear, but it was her only weakness besides Jordan. No one who had ever tried to help her had survived it.
Even more, she couldn’t allow Jordan to take this risk. Knowing she had been the cause of his death or any of his family’s would destroy her soul in a way she knew she would never survive.
The Elite Ops had given her six years of peace, what more could she ask for? It wasn’t their fault that the team had disbanded, that their contracts had run out. It wasn’t their fault that she was haunted by a past her father had created.
“Tehya.” Lilly’s determined tone had her pausing at the bedroom door, her hand on the knob. “We’re friends. Wouldn’t you help Travis and me if we were in trouble?”
She turned back just enough to see them, her gaze flicking to Jordan. “But I don’t have anyone who would give a damn, Lilly, in the way you and Travis care for one another. So that really doesn’t apply, does it? Perhaps that’s something all of you should think about. You have families. The others have children. You have something to live for. Do you really want to risk that for someone who isn’t worth it?”
Yanking the door open, she walked into the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her before rushing to her dresser.
Her small emergency backpack was there on the side. A weapon, cash, credit cards, and an extra set of keys to the car were inside.
She doubted there was a chance in hell of getting to the car, but she had to leave the house. She had to get away from the acceptance and love she could feel between the two couples. She was so desperate to have it herself, and the knowledge that they were risking what they had to hel
p her made her die a little inside.
Thinking straight, thinking logically, wasn’t going to happen here with Jordan demanding to protect her, and the other four backing him without a thought for their own safety.
She wasn’t at base any longer. There was little security, there was no safety, and Jordan wouldn’t always be there to protect her.
This was one battle she was going to have to decide whether or not to fight, on her own.
*
“She’s slipping into the garage,” John stated quietly as he watched the handheld monitor he carried. The wireless reception from the small cameras he’d installed before dawn came in clearly.
Jordan stood facing the French doors that led to the back patio, his arms crossed over his chest, as he forced himself to stay in place.
“Are Micah and Nik in place?” he asked quietly.
“They’re ready to roll,” John told him. “They have the same view I have until she leaves the camera’s field of vision. After that, all he has is the tracker we placed on her car.” He gave a small, amused grunt. “Son of a bitch, it’s a good thing you warned me about the electronics detector she slipped out of base, because she’s running it over the vehicle now. I was able to modify the tracker so she can’t spot it, but damn, it wasn’t easy.”
Jordan almost had to grin. She’d slipped out several little goodies that the team had used in the course of their missions. The enterprising little thing had squirreled away well over a million dollars’ worth of high-tech equipment.
And he’d let her. Despite the fact that he had been certain she was covered, that her new identity was secure, he’d allowed her to take it.
Because he knew it would make her feel secure.
“It’s nice to know she came out of there with something for the six years she gave you,” Bailey murmured, apparently following his train of thought.
Jordan almost winced at the not-so-subtle dig. He knew that for years the women at the base had watched him and Tehya, expecting any day that their relationship would develop into something more. When it hadn’t, their disappointment in him had been apparent.
“Door’s up and she’s pulling out, Jordan,” John reported. “Micah and Nik are on her ass.”
Maverick and Renegade would make sure she was protected.
Jordan had known she would run. Once John, Bailey, Travis, and Lilly had shown up, she’d panicked, just as Kira had predicted when he had called and apprised her of the situation before arriving in Hagerstown.
He was praying that in allowing her to run they would at least catch a glimpse of who was tailing her here. If they could identify who it was then perhaps they could get lucky and trace them back to their employer.
Kira had known Tehya far longer than the rest of them had, and during that first year on base, she had kept Tehya centered on her job when her fears had almost had her running more than once. It had taken nearly a year for her to settle into the idea of being safe.
Staying in one place wasn’t something Tehya had ever done. Most of her life had been spent running, barely managing to stay one step ahead of her father, or the men he continually sent after her.
Settling down and accepting safety hadn’t been something Tehya could adapt to overnight. And as Kira had known, once she had accepted it, the agents with the Elite Ops had become her family.
The thought of endangering them, like those who had tried to protect her as a child had been endangered, had sent her back into the panicked running mode.
Those protectors had all died within weeks of hiding her with someone else. Her father had caught up with them, tortured and murdered them. For months after Tehya had moved into base quarters, her screams had echoed into the steel-lined hall outside her bedroom from the nightmares that haunted her. More than once Jordan had been unable to resist going to her, pulling her from her suite and putting her to work to exhaust her.
“What if she doesn’t come back?” Lilly posed the question worriedly.
“She’ll come back.” Jordan turned back to them. “She has roots here now, Lilly.” He gazed around the house and thought of the small business she owned. “She’s never had roots before. They’ll tie her to this damned house when nothing else could have.”
Lilly shook her head, her gaze somber. “There are no roots strong enough to hold her if her friends are endangered or if you are.”
“Then Micah and Nik can drag her back,” he said icily. “Either way, she’s right, it has to end here, once and for all. And hiding her isn’t an option any longer. If she doesn’t face it, if she’s not a part of her own protection, then she’ll never feel secure.” And he hated realizing that. Hated having her in the line of fire.
He had assumed the malevolent shadow of her father had died the night Sorrel had been killed. He had been certain she would be safe then. Until she was attacked in France while she had been aiding French and American authorities in going through Sorrel’s estate.
This threat was coming from either her father’s former allies, or from his former enemies. Though why, Jordan hadn’t been able to learn. Sorrel was dead, there was no leverage Tehya could provide his enemies. The Sorrel organization had disbanded, and those not in prison had gone on to much more lucrative ventures. Those men had no reason to want to strike out at her. It didn’t make sense, but there was too much proof that somehow, somewhere, this was coming from her ties to her Sorrel.
“You shouldn’t have let her go off alone,” Lilly said, the distinct, feminine arrogance of her European accent emphasizing her displeasure. Lilly had no problem expressing her displeasure when she felt it warranted.
His lips thinned.
“Enough,” he said coolly. “I’m no knight in shining armor, Lilly. I can’t be her savior. All I can do is try to get her through this alive.”
Lilly gave a delicate little snort as her husband cleared his throat. It was more than obvious he was covering a chuckle.
“There’s a difference between being her savior and her lover, Jordan,” Bailey said. “And don’t even try to tell me you weren’t, or aren’t interested.”
Jordan glared at John, then at Travis.
John held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, man, she has a mouth of her own. I just try to protect it when she pisses too many people off.”
Hell. He didn’t need this crap. He should be out there following Tehya, ensuring her safety rather than leaving the task to others. For now, she was his woman, his lover. She was his responsibility.
Not that they weren’t fully capable of protecting her, but the male protective instincts rising inside him didn’t care. She was his. He didn’t trust anyone to protect her as he knew only he could.
“I did get around to researching the landscaping company she owns,” Finally Bailey had something to say other than the subtle recriminations she and Lily were prone to aim at him. “I reached the previous owner before we came in this morning. He’s retired and living the life in Florida.” She rolled her eyes. “The company had been up for sale for over a year before Tehya bought it. There’s nothing suspicious there. He absolutely adores her, though. She negotiated the price down by several thousand dollars despite his best efforts. He said it was like stealing money from his own kid until he dropped the price for her.” Amusement and affection filled her voice.
Jordan could believe that. Saying no to Tehya was damned hard, even for him.
“It was near bankruptcy when she bought it,” Lilly said, taking over. “It’s now thriving. She has quite a few customers, many who began with simple, small projects and then ended up calling again for other projects as her flair for design became known. When I called them, supposedly for references, he sang her praises and all but demanded I hire her.”
“She has an excellent head for business,” Travis said, taking his turn. “I went over her accounts when I hacked her office computer this morning. She’s building slowly, taking her time and ensuring she’s not overreaching. As stated, she’s a damned good designer
and she has a some good employees.”
“Losing the business would break her heart,” Lilly said as she stared back at him, her gaze hard, as though he were somehow endangering the business their friend so loved.
Hell, the two women weren’t going to stop.
“I’m not asking her to walk away from it, Lilly,” he reminded her, irritation hardening his tone. “You know that.”
Her lips thinned as she turned away from him. It was evident the two women were somehow blaming him for this situation.
Much more, Jordan admitted, and he would have to rethink his decision to bring the couples in. He may end up having to send them back to their own lives.
“She’s stopped, Jordan.” John interrupted his thoughts as a report came through to the Bluetooth communications set he wore at his ear. “A bar in Hagerstown.”
“Friendly’s.” Jordan gave a short nod. “She’s been going there for a while.” Rory and his partner Casey had been watching her there for nearly a week.
“And she had a tail.” John turned to him as Jordan felt his body tighten with furious tension. “They pulled back for some reason, though, when she pulled into the bar. Micah’s certain he and Nik weren’t spotted, but when she pulled into the parking lot across from the bar, the tail turned around and disappeared.”
“They knew where she was headed,” Jordan guessed. “There’s someone either waiting at the bar or heading in behind her. They’ll wait to see who follows her in.”
John gave a tight nod. “Whoever’s following her here are damned good Jordan. That’s the only glimpse thats been caught of them. They’re careful.”
“Too damned careful and too damned quiet. We don’t even know how many are watching her, who’s hired them, and not even a peep regarding their agenda,” Lilly crossed her arms beneath her breasts as she frowned back at them.
John shook his head as his wife, Bailey, moved closer, and he wrapped his arm around her. “They can’t remain hidden forever though. Sooner or later, they’ll have to make a move, and when they do, we’ll be there, waiting.”
Jordan stared at the two men and their very capable wives as they stared back at him, and thought of the two men following her, as well as the one winging his way to Maryland even now. He’d called in the best help he could find to save the only woman who had mattered to his soul since he was a boy.