by LENA DIAZ,
“I was hoping you could tell me. I created these boards based on information that I’ve picked up, without my father’s knowledge. Why does he think you’re his enemy?”
“He told you that? He thinks I’m his enemy?”
“No. His reaction when he first saw you told me that.”
As she explained how she’d begun to suspect that something was going on at EXIT several months ago because of a conversation that she’d overheard between her father and an IT guy, Jace’s anger changed to alarm.
The more he listened, the more worried he became. Not about Melissa’s culpability. He no longer believed she could be in league with her father. Because Cyprian would never condone her even having this kind of information, let alone her sharing it. What made him nervous was realizing how much digging and eavesdropping she’d done at EXIT. All it would have taken was one little slip, and she’d have gotten herself killed, as she very nearly had yesterday.
When she pointed to another name on the board and explained the story behind it, his disgust for her father increased tenfold. How could a man be so selfish that his actions had forced his daughter to choose between loving her father and following her conscience?
Cyprian had put her in the position of feeling that she had to confess to a relative stranger in order to save that stranger’s life and the lives of others. The misery those actions caused her shone in her eyes, sounded in every word, appeared in every gesture that damned her father and killed her a little more inside.
He hated Cyprian for that.
When she finished her explanation, her throat sounded raw. “Am I wrong to think that none of this is a surprise to you?”
There was no point in denying it now. She obviously wasn’t buying that he was just a bodyguard. His cover was blown. The mission was over.
“You’re not wrong.”
She let out a ragged breath. “And you . . . rescuing me up on the mountain. That was a lie, too, wasn’t it?”
The hurt in her voice sent a stab of guilt straight to his gut.
“The man in the ski mask,” she continued, “the man who ran me off the road and waved a gun at me . . . he was, what? A friend of yours? You risked my life to play hero, to make me grateful? To what end?”
“It didn’t happen the way it was planned. No one was supposed to point a gun at you. My . . . friend . . . was supposed to drive recklessly, forcing you to pull over. Then he’d head down the road, leaving me to check on you. You were never supposed to be in any danger.”
“And what was the point of this fake friendship that you wanted to cultivate?” She waved at the boards. “What’s your role in all of this?”
She deserved the truth. But he couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t compromise the Equalizers. Only Devlin and Mason could authorize the sharing of information about them. And Jace doubted that Mason could ever trust Melissa Cardenas, the daughter of his mortal enemy, the man who’d almost killed Mason and his wife.
Jace was pretty damn surprised that he trusted her himself, at least as much as he could trust anyone. But he wasn’t a fool. If she ever had to choose between saving her father or saving him, he wasn’t going to place any bets that he’d end up on the top side of six feet under.
“What’s your role in this?” She asked again, searching his face, tension pulling her skin so tight across her cheekbones that she looked fragile, like she might fall apart at any moment.
Damn, he hated this mission, hated that he’d ever agreed to involve Melissa in any way. He’d never wanted her to get hurt, but he’d plowed ahead anyway, consequences be damned. In some ways, he was treating her no better than her father was. And he hated himself for that.
“It’s obvious that you know about at least some of the people listed on those boards,” she said, continuing to push, refusing to give up even though she wasn’t getting the answers she sought. She was tenacious, and maybe not as fragile as he’d assumed.
He faced the boards, carefully weighing his response and whether it could compromise his teammates in any way. Finally, he said, “You’re right. I do.”
Excitement lit her eyes. “And you knew my father, or at least you knew about him, before meeting him on that road? The truth this time. Please.”
The truth. “I knew about him long before we met. Yes.”
“So, I was a pawn? To get to him?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth flattened, and anger flashed in her dark brown eyes. “You, Jace Atwell, are an ass.”
“You’ll get no argument here.”
Her brows crinkled, her anger fading as quickly as it had appeared. “But you won’t tell me your plan? What you hope, or hoped, to accomplish?”
When he didn’t answer, she thumped her finger against his chest. “At least tell me my father’s role in all of this. Tell me he’s caught up in something that isn’t his fault.” She searched his eyes.
The pain and desperation stamped in her expression, laced in her tone, had him longing to pull her into his arms to try to soothe the hurt. But he knew she wouldn’t welcome his touch. Whatever attraction they might feel for each other didn’t matter now. If it ever had.
“Jace. Damn it, you owe me an explanation. Tell me he’s not responsible for the deaths of all of these people.” She waved at the boards.
Unable to deny her any longer, he gave her the answer she thought she wanted, but not the answer he knew she needed. “I wish I could tell you that he’s innocent. But I can’t.”
He braced himself for tears. The pain was there in her eyes, in the stark angles of her face. He expected her to shatter in front of him.
But she didn’t.
She straightened her shoulders and crossed to the back wall of windows looking out at the snow-topped mountains.
Operation Trojan Horse was obviously over, and a complete failure. The only reason Jace didn’t leave right then was because he felt duty-bound to make sure she’d be okay. She did need a bodyguard. That hadn’t changed. And it was imperative that he convince her to hire someone else before he left. So he waited for her to compose herself.
A few minutes later, she turned around and crossed to him with sure strides. Gone was the pale, fragile-looking woman who’d begged him to tell her that her father wasn’t the monster Jace knew him to be. And in her place was the confident, determined executive who commanded a multimillion-dollar-a-year corporation. And she looked like she was ready to go into battle.
“Who are you working for?” she demanded.
He took a wary step back, but she moved forward, allowing him no retreat.
“Who are you working for?” she repeated.
“What makes you think I’m working for anyone?”
“Ski-mask guy. You said a friend was supposed to have pulled that stunt with you. Is it just you and this friend working together? Or are there others?”
Had he really thought that he needed to stick around to convince her to hire a bodyguard? Hell, the woman standing up to him now could be one of Cyprian’s enforcers.
“Are you working with the police? Undercover? Is that why you didn’t call them yesterday? Are you trying to get evidence against my father? To send him to prison?”
He very nearly laughed at that suggestion. Cyprian would never see the inside of a courthouse. The Council would never allow that.
“Answer me.” She crossed her arms like a miniwarrior, glaring up at him. Damn, she was beautiful. And her show of courage made him want to smile. But he ruthlessly tamped down that urge, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate it.
“No. I’m not working with the police. My turn. What are you going to do now that you know your father is guilty of causing the deaths of these people?”
Her brows rose. “I don’t know that he’s guilty. I have your word on that. But I don’t know that.”
He frowned. “Then what was the point of showing me the boards, of telling me about your research?”
“I showed them to you because I want you to help me
stop whatever’s going on.”
“But not if it means going after your father.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, you pretty much did. Even after everything you’ve seen, everything you know, you’re in denial. You can’t see past your loyalty and your love for your father to see the truth. That leaves us with no middle ground. We’re on opposite sides.” He grabbed his jacket and go bag and strode toward the steps. “I’ll call a bodyguard service to send someone out here to take my place.”
She caught up to him as he headed into the kitchen. She jumped in front of the door that led into the mudroom and garage, holding her hands out as if she actually thought she could stop him.
“Wait,” she said, frustration heavy in her voice. “We’re not on opposite sides. We both want to stop whatever is going on, don’t we?”
He gave her a curt nod.
“Okay. But without proof, I have to cling to the hope that what I know about my father, about the man who raised me, hasn’t changed. Inside, he’s a good man, with a good heart. There has to be some kind of . . . of conspiracy here. Maybe someone is blackmailing him or manipulating him. Maybe that’s what that meeting was about yesterday. I don’t know. But I can’t do anything about this situation without knowing the facts.”
He shook his head in exasperation. “There is no conspiracy. Your father is the head of the snake. Nothing happens that he doesn’t know about or arrange. Whether you choose to believe it or not, every person on those cork boards who has died—and others that you don’t even know about—has died or is in danger because of him. He might not have killed anyone by his own hand. But he’s responsible just the same.”
The blood drained from her face. “There are more? Others have died?”
He gave her a curt nod.
She shook her head back and forth. “None of this makes sense. My father is a businessman. He works hard, long hours. He’s always at the office. He’s got a successful tour company. He’s not the evil person you’re making him out to be.”
He braced his hands on the wall on either side of her, caging her in. “Right. So you snuck upstairs yesterday because you didn’t want to miss a legitimate company meeting?”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Jace. I knew the man he was meeting has nothing to do with the running of EXIT. That’s why I wanted to listen in, to gather more evidence, so I can put the pieces together. So I can stop this. But I’m not ready to throw my father under the proverbial bus and let him take the fall for whoever is orchestrating everything. I want facts. And it’s taking too damn long to get them on my own. Why can’t we work together, regardless of our individual opinions about my father’s character? We both want the truth.”
He laughed harshly. “You definitely don’t want the truth.”
“You’re wrong. I do want the truth. I want to know what’s really going on.”
He flexed his fingers against the wall beside her. “The truth? Okay, the truth. Your father runs a side of EXIT Inc. that you’ve never seen, a completely different organization that uses the tour service as a front. While you handle the day-to-day operations of the EXIT Inc. known to the public, your father oversees his own personal team of assassins. Professional, trained killers at his beck and call.”
Her eyes widened. “No. No, you’re making that up. That’s absurd.”
He wished she was right, but when former enforcers, Devlin and Mason, had recruited his help, they’d shown him proof of Cyprian’s deeds. They’d shared pictures, reports, secret documents—with Cyprian’s signature on them—culled from EXIT’s own computers during an earlier security hack into the system. They’d even had both of their wives—Emily and Sabrina—talk to Jace over the phone, telling him their personal stories about how Cyprian had sent enforcers to kill them, even though they were innocent.
Perhaps the most damning evidence was something he’d found out just two nights ago, when he was watching over Ramsey while the doctors were working on him. Austin had been on the phone, asking for updates, and was convinced that Cyprian had to be behind Ramsey’s getting hurt. When Jace had asked Austin why he was so convinced, Austin told him that he was in a wheelchair, and had nearly been burned to death, because of Cyprian and his men. And here Cyprian’s daughter stood, accusing Jace of making everything up about her father.
“Why would I make it up? Oh, the assassins—your father calls them enforcers—didn’t know they were hurting innocent people at the time. And there are plenty of missions that don’t involve killing anyone. Plus, enforcers certainly weren’t hurting innocent people in the beginning. But things changed. Instead of being assigned to take out terrorists and other bad guys, their orders were lies, fabrications, making the innocent look guilty. Cyprian, and his assistant at the time, sold the enforcers’ services to the highest bidder. And to cover it up, Cyprian gave orders to kill the very men who’d sworn their loyalty to him.”
She shook her head, her long dark hair flying out around her. “No, that’s ridiculous. And horrible. Stop lying.”
“Everything I just said is the stone-cold truth. The people who work for your father, these enforcers, are supposed to enforce the law, preemptively. Meaning, they take out bad guys before they act, before they kill others. Or at least, that’s what they were supposed to do originally. But all of that has changed. It’s out of control, and innocent people are paying the price with their lives. That’s why the Council appointed a Watcher, to keep an eye on him.”
Her eyes widened. “Council? Watcher?”
He blew out a breath. He hadn’t meant to tell her about the Council or the Watcher. But he supposed now that he’d mentioned them, there wasn’t any reason not to tell her the rest—as long as he kept the Equalizers out of it.
“A Council of six men and women is the liaison between the government and EXIT, so the government can distance itself from what happens. Very few enforcers even know about the Council. But a select group did, and involved the Council last year to rein in your father’s excesses. The Council agreed that something had to be done. They put Cyprian on some kind of probation and appointed a Watcher, whose identity only the Council knows, to secretly watch your father and report regularly to the Council.”
He waved his hand impatiently. “All of that is irrelevant. The point is that the Council’s actions haven’t gone far enough. What they should have done is dismantle the enforcement side of EXIT completely. No matter who heads up the clandestine side of the company, the lure of absolute power vested in one person is too great, too dangerous. The killing has to stop. Your father has to be stopped. EXIT has to be destroyed.”
Her mouth fell open. “You really believe everything you’re telling me, don’t you?”
He snorted. “Hell, Melissa. I not only believe it, I know it.”
“Then prove it. Show me.”
If he did, he’d be skirting too close to the truth, that Cyprian’s enemies were united against him as the Equalizers. That they were growing stronger every day and poised to make a difference. But he couldn’t go there, couldn’t tell her about that. Not without betraying his friends. And not without risking their lives, risking that Cyprian might go after them before they were ready, and able, to withstand such an attack.
“I can’t do that,” he said.
“Why not? Because you have no proof?”
“This argument is pointless. We’re done here.”
He lifted her out of his way and headed into the garage. She cursed behind him as the security panel started beeping, forcing her to shut off the alarm while he got into his car.
The garage door was only half-raised when the Buick’s passenger door opened and Melissa hopped inside, shoving her arms in a jacket she must have grabbed on her way through the mudroom.
Damn it. He should have locked the door. “Get out. We’re not discussing this anymore.”
“Just because you’re ready to end the conversation doesn’t mean that I am. Your goal on that mounta
in was to get me to trust you, and hire you at EXIT, so you could snoop around, right?”
“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t because I admired your father and wanted to work with him.”
“Stow the sarcasm, Atwell. I’m being an adult here. Join me.”
He gunned the engine. “Get. Out.”
“You wanted a way to get into EXIT,” she snapped. “I can help with that. As far as my father knows, nothing has changed. You’re still my bodyguard. We can use that to get you back inside, to do whatever snooping you want.”
He searched her eyes. “You really mean that.”
“I’m not cracking jokes here. Yes, I mean it.”
“Why would you help me get into EXIT?”
She threw her hands up in obvious frustration. “I already told you. I want the facts. Not conjecture. Even before I came downstairs this morning, I called Jolene and told her we weren’t going in to the office. I had her reschedule my meetings. She thinks I’m taking you around to the tour outposts to give you a better understanding of what we do, so you can weigh the dangers, figure out how to keep me safe no matter where I have to go. No one except me knows that you aren’t what you seem. I want to be your partner in this investigation. I want to help you.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, not after everything we just said to each other.”
She clenched her fists in her lap. “I have to stop you from destroying my father.”
He leaned across her and popped open the passenger door. “And that, Melissa, is why you’re getting out of this car. We’re on opposite sides of this war. That makes us enemies, not allies.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She slammed the door shut and pressed her hand against his chest.
He swore and backed away, or tried to, but his shoulders were too broad to allow much room to maneuver. He lifted her hand off his chest. “Get out,” he repeated.
She twisted in her seat to face him. “No. I didn’t ask for this war, as you call it, or to be dragged into the middle of it. But that’s exactly what my father, and you, have done—dragged me into the middle. And now that I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. I deserve a chance to prove that he’s not the man that you think he is. I deserve a chance to . . . to . . .”