Take the Key and Lock Her Up

by LENA DIAZ,

  Ace’s gaze swept down to Cougar’s fingers, as if he knew what Cougar was thinking. His lips curved in a smile that didn’t come close to reaching his eyes.

  “I’ve got to check on a few things. I’ll meet you back at the hotel.” Ace strode off into the darkness, in the opposite direction of their van.

  Cougar slumped against the house and brushed a shaky hand across his brow. His stomach rumbled. He whirled around and threw up his fast-food dinner in the hedge.

  DEVLIN PAUSED IN the doorway of his bedroom. Technically, just barely, it was still Friday. But it felt like the hours had dragged on for days. Other than his brief stop here earlier to drop off his luggage and shower before heading to Alex’s house, he hadn’t been home in months—not that this place had ever really felt like home. This house was just somewhere to go between missions, his official address. Situated deep in the woods on the opposite side of Savannah from where his family lived, it was his safe place, where he could retreat when he needed to regroup, replan, or reload.

  Hidden panels in the walls contained a vast collection of weapons, including ones he’d designed himself. Nearly every room had at least one go bag of survival gear that could sustain him for weeks. And the underground garage with its camouflaged entrance contained a Porsche and a Maserati, fueled and ready to go.

  In and around the city he had other vehicles in strategic locations, including several parking garages downtown. And he had two other homes similar to this one hundreds of miles away. No one else knew about them, not even his best friend, Gage. Those houses were his fallbacks, his nuclear options if he ever needed to disappear.

  He’d purchased them as soon as his first big paychecks from EXIT had started rolling in, over a dozen years ago. Each estate had a caretaker and a healthy bank account for its upkeep, established under an alias buried beneath a trail of dozens of corporations. Odd that he would think about them now, because he rarely ever did. But after today, he was rethinking everything.

  He strode into his bedroom and stopped at the far wall, opposite the bed. He didn’t expect any security issues. But as was his habit, he slid a panel back to reveal an electronic screen and quickly checked the security camera views. Satisfied, he closed the panel and moved in front of the large painting centered on the wall.

  It was something Madison had helped him pick out from an exhibit at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His artistically inclined sister-in-law adored SCAD and had insisted that he go there with her to find something special for his house. Somehow she’d seemed to know exactly what might appeal to him and had steered him toward this particular piece.

  Of all the paintings he owned—and he owned quite a few—this one was his favorite: a night sky full of bright stars that reminded him of the view from his father’s deck. He pulled the picture back on its hinges, revealing the wall safe behind it. One quick press of his thumb on the scanner and the lock clicked open.

  Bundles of money in foreign currencies, passports, and IDs lay amid other documents that supported his many aliases. He reached past those and pulled out an inch-thick rectangular metal box that was just a little longer and wider than a typical piece of paper. He set it on the dresser beneath the painting and popped open the lid.

  Dozens of photographs lay on top. He flipped past the favorites of his family, the most recent one of Matt and Tessa at their wedding a few months ago. As much as Matt had chased Tessa over the years, Devlin would have expected him to be confident and grinning like a fool at the altar. Just the opposite was true. Matt had been the nervous one, as if he couldn’t believe he’d finally gotten the woman he loved to marry him. It was his bride, Tessa, who’d grinned the entire time, and teased Matt about how pale he looked beneath his tan.

  After setting the treasured photos aside, all that remained was a half-inch-thick binder of dossiers on the enforcers who worked for EXIT. The dossiers were supposed to be secret, protected by firewalls and accessible only by Cyprian and his close associates. Devlin could appreciate why his boss wouldn’t want this information to get out. But Cyprian was a little too careful sometimes in what data he shared, which had put Devlin at a disadvantage the last time he’d hunted a rogue agent, and had nearly gotten him killed. After that, he’d used some of the computer tricks his brother Matt had taught him and hacked into the EXIT computer system to obtain the dossiers on all of the agents.

  Every few months he hacked back in through the same security loophole and updated the information in his binder, until about four months ago, when new security features were added to the system. Since then, Devlin hadn’t been able to get back in. But the information was current enough for his purposes today.

  He carried the binder across the room and sat at the desk by the window. Each page was dedicated to one enforcer. At the top were pictures. Beneath those were legal names, known aliases, and the monikers some preferred to use, such as Ace, Diesel, or Cobra. The second half of the binder contained summaries of each mission the enforcers performed.

  He flipped through, stopping when he saw the picture of Gage Thomas. He’d joined the company for one reason: to earn enough money to provide for his little sister, Nancy, after their parents were killed. He’d bought a big white farmhouse outside of town. Nancy, enamored with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that summer, had christened the house Jackson’s Island, just like in the book, because the house was surrounded by a “river of grass.” She drove Gage crazy calling him Joe Harper and herself Tom Sawyer all summer long. Gage had complained about it to Devlin, not realizing Ace and Kelly were nearby. Of course after that, for months, Ace and Kelly had teased Gage by calling him Joe Harper. Devlin grinned at the memories.

  Nancy was a sophomore in college now, which should have made Gage happy. But her insistence on majoring in criminal justice had caused a deep rift between them. His secret role in EXIT had him convinced his sister would become his enemy and a threat if she continued down that path. He’d criticized her major and demanded she change it, threatening to cut her off financially. Nancy, knowing nothing about EXIT, couldn’t understand her brother’s hostility. Rather than change her major, she applied for a scholarship. And won it.

  Nancy should be home now on college break. Devlin hoped she and her brother could work through their differences during the break and become close once again.

  He flipped another page. His smile faded when he saw the picture of Shannon Fisher, her long dark-brown hair curling around her shoulders as she smiled up at him. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her. She’d been a good person. Information she’d gathered on her missions had positioned others to neutralize threats and save countless lives. It was a tragedy that her family would never know that she’d been a true hero instead of the simple tour guide they believed her to be.

  Impatience had him quickly flipping past several more familiar faces until he found the one he was searching for: Kelly Parker. Another enforcer, one who sometimes conducted regular missions but worked mostly on secret assignments known only to her and Cyprian. Kelly was Cyprian’s right hand in many ways, his confidante and sounding board on important decisions, like whether to recruit Devlin to join EXIT.

  After he’d joined the team, in addition to Gage helping him with the transition, Kelly had been right there to answer his questions and guide him through training. They’d become good friends. She was almost fanatical in her love of sailing and had tried, without success, to get him to love it too. He’d gone boating with her and others they worked with—like Ace, Gage, even Shannon a couple of times. But the only part he’d enjoyed was when Kelly tried to teach all of them how to tie fancy nautical knots, like the X-shaped, double-overhand knot she was so fond of. That was definitely a skill that could come in handy in his line of work. Unfortunately, it was also a skill he’d never mastered. And using handcuffs was so much faster.

  But it wasn’t Kelly’s inability to sway him to enjoy boating that had caused a rift between them. They’d made the mistake of taking their rel
ationship to the next level. They became lovers. While Devlin was all for being adventurous in the bedroom, Kelly’s appetite for rough play left him cold. More importantly, it violated one of his own personal rules of behavior that he lived by in addition to EXIT’s rules: never hurt a woman. Even though Kelly was the one who wanted him to hurt her, he wasn’t about to break that rule. After he explained that to her, they had no choice but to go back to being just friends.

  Not long after that, he’d recommended the termination of another enforcer—Ace. That was what had finally ended his friendship with Kelly. Devlin believed Ace was too brutal, that he took pleasure from killing, that he was a ticking time bomb dangerous to EXIT’s mission. Ace was a loose cannon, unpredictable, loyal to no one but himself. He could be your friend one minute and slice your throat the next. But when Cyprian debated the decision with Kelly, his confidante, she’d argued against termination. Devlin had countered the argument with the fact that Ace and Kelly were friends, so she might not be impartial. But Cyprian took Kelly’s side, as he often did. And since that day, Kelly had been cold and distant with Devlin. Rumors were that Kelly and Ace were more enemies than friends now, that Ace had been too brutal even for her tastes. But Devlin didn’t know if the rumors were true.

  He studied her picture—her dark, expressive eyes, her long, blonde hair, the distinctive strawberry birthmark on her right cheek. He’d hoped he was wrong, that his memories had played a cruel trick on him, but he could no longer deny what was right in front of him. He hadn’t seen Kelly in months, maybe longer, until earlier this evening at his father’s house.

  When O’Malley asked him if he recognized the missing woman in the police sketch.

  Chapter Ten

  * * *

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU tell me about what happened yesterday?” A bleary-eyed Gage Thomas stood in Devlin’s kitchen doorway, his shoulder-length, dark hair unkempt, his clothes wrinkled, as if he’d slept in them.

  “How did you find out?” Devlin didn’t bother to pretend that he didn’t know what his friend was talking about.

  Gage snorted. “Right. You don’t think Cyprian has eyes and ears in the police station?” Although he was several inches shorter than Devlin, he had a compact, muscular build and used his bulk to shove past him into the house.

  Devlin shut the door, waiting to see what his friend would do. When he’d seen him on the security cameras a few minutes ago, he hadn’t known what to expect. He’d hoped Gage was stopping by for something unrelated to the events of yesterday and last night. Obviously that hope had been foolish.

  Gage glanced around the eat-in kitchen, as if he were automatically marking the exits even though he knew them all. He’d been here dozens of times over the years. During football season he practically lived in the family room, beer in one hand, peanuts or popcorn in the other, planted in one of the leather recliners in front of the big-screen TV.

  He sat in one of the chairs at the table in the middle of the room and dropped a thick manila envelope next to Devlin’s half-eaten breakfast of eggs and bacon. “Take a look.”

  Devlin resumed his seat across from Gage and shoved his plate out of the way. He opened the envelope and emptied out the contents: dozens of photographs. He was glad he hadn’t eaten much yet because what he had eaten had coiled into a cold hard knot in his stomach.

  Startling color images painted a heinous scene. Amid the chaos of torn clothing, wildly tousled hair, and matted branches and grass beneath the broken body was blood, lots of blood. But in spite of the blood and the bruises, the dead woman’s face was still recognizable.

  Shannon.

  He focused on keeping his expression carefully blank while his heart ached for what she’d obviously suffered. This wasn’t a quick execution. It was sadistic torture, performed by someone who enjoyed causing excruciating pain, and drawing it out as long as possible—for days, if the color of the bruises was an indicator.

  The pictures, as awful as they were, did serve one useful purpose—they gave Devlin new information about the murder. They proved that even though Shannon’s remains had been discovered in a basement, she’d been killed somewhere else, somewhere outside. If he could recognize a landmark in the pictures, figure out where she’d been killed, maybe he could go there and search for clues about her attacker.

  Of course right now the more urgent question was, why did Gage have these pictures?

  On any other day, if Gage had shown up this early at Devlin’s house, he’d have been helping himself to the contents of the refrigerator or trying to steal some bacon from his plate. Instead, he was anxious, intent, watching Devlin’s every move.

  The same way an enforcer might watch his mark, the person he was tasked with executing.

  Every muscle in Devlin’s body tensed. His instincts urged him to strike before it was too late. But this was Gage, his friend, one of the few people who knew about Arianna and the horrible toll her death had taken on Devlin.

  Gage had been his mentor, his confidant, his brother in everything but blood since the day EXIT had recruited Devlin. Killing him had to be a last resort. And even then, Devlin wasn’t sure he could. So instead of striking fast and hard, he hesitated, waited, and hoped he wasn’t making a fatal mistake. Even though he and Gage were good friends—best friends—their loyalty to EXIT and its mission had always come first. But their loyalty had never been tested like this before.

  “What is this?” Devlin waved at the pictures. “They obviously aren’t police photos. When the police found Shannon, she was just a skeleton. Where did you get these?”

  “Cyprian. He said the killer sent them to him, to gloat.” His voice sounded raw, ragged, as he sorted through the pictures and pulled some from the middle of the stack. He thumped them with his fist. “Did you think Cyprian wouldn’t find out that you and Shannon were lovers?”

  A cold feeling of dread flashed through Devlin as he stared at these newest pictures. What were the odds that someone would have taken surveillance photos of him and Shannon the only time they’d ever been intimate? The pictures were explicit, leaving no question about what he and Shannon were doing. And they had to have been taken with high-tech equipment, capable of filming through the tiny pinholes in the blinds over his bedroom window. Because he’d definitely had the blinds shut. That wasn’t a detail he would have forgotten, even if he hadn’t expected anyone to be watching from outside.

  Those photos were from last summer, almost a year ago, which meant whoever had taken them had been planning this for a long time. Any doubts he might have harbored before evaporated now.

  Someone was trying to frame him.

  But who? Who hated him enough to sacrifice Shannon and those other women as part of his plan? What had he done to make such a powerful enemy?

  Gage selected several more photographs and dropped them on top of the pile.

  Devlin sucked in a breath, this time unable to hide his surprise. The top picture had been taken in France, over a year and a half ago. Even if the Eiffel Tower in the background hadn’t given the location away, he’d have remembered. It was the only time he’d ever partnered on a mission with the other enforcer in the photograph.

  Kelly Parker.

  The picture showed the two of them locked in a heated kiss. The kiss was part of their cover, for the benefit of the man they were pursuing, to make him think they were an amorous couple strolling along the path behind him instead of his executioners. The ploy had worked. They’d gotten their mark. But apparently they weren’t the only ones there that day. And whoever had snapped this photograph was now using it in their campaign to destroy him.

  Devlin picked up another one of the photos, taken at a marina, showing him and Kelly getting ready to go sailing. How long ago had that one been taken? He held it up as if to study it, when his real goal was to distract Gage while he slid his left hand under the table to the shotgun mounted underneath. He tossed the picture on the table and studied his friend.

  Or was Gage his execut
ioner?

  “What else do you have?” Devlin asked.

  “What else? Isn’t this enough? One ex-lover slaughtered. Another missing?”

  “How did you know Kelly was missing?”

  “How did you? Do you think Cyprian doesn’t keep tabs on our personal relationships? He knows everything about us. He probably knows the flight number of the plane Nancy flew on to come home from school a few days ago. You know the drill. You know there’s no true privacy at EXIT. How could you be so careless?”

  Devlin stilled. “You think I killed Shannon? That I abducted Kelly?”

  “Did you?”

  His hand tightened around the gun beneath the table. “Do you really think I’d be stupid enough to take pictures of one of my kills and send them to Cyprian? What about the other pictures? Someone has obviously been conducting surveillance on me for a long time.”

  “Are you kidding? Tell me you don’t conduct surveillance on the rest of us to make sure we haven’t gone rogue. Isn’t that part of your job?” When Devlin didn’t say anything, Gage shook his head. “Just because you’re the one who’s supposed to keep an eye on the rest of us doesn’t mean Cyprian doesn’t keep an eye on you too. What do you think all those special projects are that Kelly works on for Cyprian? She’s one of his spies. Or at least she was. I’m sure there are other spies too.”

  Devlin blinked in surprise. “How would you know that about Kelly?”

  Gage was the one who didn’t answer this time. His mouth tightened and he looked away.

  Devlin swore. He’d never have guessed Kelly was Gage’s type. But now he understood why Cyprian would send Gage to take Devlin out. Cyprian would assume since the two of them were friends that Gage could surprise him. And since Cyprian had to know that Gage cared about Kelly, he wouldn’t be worried that the friendship with Devlin would stop Gage from carrying out his duty.