by Misty Evans
Right. Again, she heard Linc Norman’s words. You pissed off the most dangerous assassin to ever set foot in Washington and now he’s going to kill you.
The idea was ridiculous, but that didn’t stop her from taking another step closer to the door.
Even if all Hunter wanted was Parker’s file, he could have already taken the USB and bugged out. He had brought her here, pretended he cared about her. Had taken her to bed like a lover and encouraged her to stand up to her mother and stop hiding in the shadows of the past.
He was definitely there for something more than a file on Project 24.
Revenge. The word circled her brain. “Wow. The president’s correct on all counts. I am clueless. And gullible, apparently. You seduced me so I’d fall in love with you. You’re not here to kill me, just rip my heart out. Nice.”
“Love?” He seemed shocked by the idea.
She started for the bathroom, and Trace started to follow. “Don’t,” she said, holding up a hand once more. She’d had it, and damn it, she was not going to cry in front of him. No matter what. She might throw something, but never would she cry. “Get out of my sight.”
His face morphed into something she couldn’t name. “The intel in the file Parker gave you on me wasn’t true, I swear. I’ve done a lot of shit in my life that I’m not proud of, but I would never betray my country. I would never hurt you.”
“And yet, you hid your identity from me this whole time.”
Just saying it out loud ripped her heart a little more.
“I needed to prove to you that I’m not the scumbag you exposed on your TV show eighteen months ago. You would have never given me the chance if I’d told you who I was upfront.”
He was right, but that didn’t make his betrayal forgivable. “When were you going to tell me?”
He closed his eyes for a second, opened them, but didn’t look at her. “I tried to tell you multiple times. Things between us got out of hand. I…”
“Out of hand? So you thought it better to lie to me by omission? Figured you’d get me in bed first, then lay the big reveal on me, and I’d be so wowed by your sexual prowess I wouldn’t care? Well, good job burying your lead, Lt. Hunter. You totally suckered me.”
She couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. Fleeing to the bathroom, heart fluttering like a manic bird, she closed the door behind her, flipped the lock, and beat a fist against the wall.
Dammit. What was she going to do now?
TRACE STOOD OUTSIDE the bathroom door, quiet as a cat, listening, his guts shriveled to a tight lump in his stomach. The look on Savanna’s face had crushed him. That fear—how could she believe, after everything they’d been through, that he would hurt her?
Fucking Linc Norman.
No point blaming him. It was his own damn fault. And he had hurt her. He’d totally screwed her over in more ways than one.
Love. She’d said he seduced her so she’d fall in love with him. Seemed like she’d been doing the seducing and he’d fallen for her. It wasn’t love, though. It was…
Infatuation?
Passion?
Admiration?
Shit, he didn’t know at this point. He’d never loved anyone outside of his grandmother.
Savanna’s fear had been followed by the realization he’d deceived her and that kind of pain, in Trace’s experience, was worse than any kind of physical hurt.
In all the ways he’d fucked up in his life, this was the worst. She’d trusted him. Relied on him.
Behind the door of the bathroom, he heard little noises. Noises like muffled crying.
Ah, shit. He’d made her cry. “Savanna.”
No response.
He tapped on the door. “Savanna, I never meant for that” —whatever that had been—“to happen. The sex. The…seduction.”
“That makes me feel tons better,” she yelled through the door. “Thanks. Now go away. I want a new bodyguard. Wait…”
The door creaked open two inches. Savanna’s face was puffy and red. Yep, definitely crying.
“Did Beatrice know about this? She did, didn’t she? She said something to me that first day about me persecuting innocent people. Jesus! How could I be so stupid?”
The door slammed shut again and he laid a hand on the frame. “Beatrice is the one who convinced me to take your case. She knew Norman was after me, but not why. She thought you and I could help each other.”
A sarcastic laugh exploded on the other side. “Help each other? Yeah, we sure did that. I’m still alive but we’re no closer to finding my sister, and you… Well, I’m not sure what you got out of this other than toying with me. Although, I’ll admit, I did the seducing. God! The first time I ever go after a guy, and it’s one who’s dicking with me!”
Love. He wasn’t lovable, even when he wasn’t trying to kill people. Far from it. He was a messed up piece of shit that didn’t deserve one look from Savanna, much less her love.
Trace laid his forehead on the door. Think, Hunter. How do I fix this?
He heard those tiny sounds again and it gutted him. She was crying into a towel.
Water came on. She knew the towel wasn’t enough to hide her crying. So damn tough.
He wanted to kick in the door. Wanted to grab her and hold her until she realized he wasn’t going anywhere. Wasn’t leaving her alone, no matter how much she hated him, because he would protect her come hell or high water.
“I’m sorry, Savanna,” he said through the door, hoping it carried over the water noise. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Me, too,” she yelled back, trying to sound angry. “Now get me a new bodyguard.”
“I will, but I need to tell you the rest of my story. In case something happens to me. I need you to know.”
No response, so he waited. And waited.
The water shut off. There were no more crying noises.
He put his back to the door and slid down to sit on his butt. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes. It shouldn’t take Rory much longer to decode the Parker data. Then they’d have to decide what they were doing with it.
God, he was tired. More tired than he’d been in his whole life. He couldn’t force himself on Savanna. Couldn’t make her listen if she didn’t want to.
He could get her a new bodyguard. He wouldn’t leave her completely, but he’d stay in the shadows.
“I’ll go call Beatrice,” he said. “I’ll get you the best damn bodyguard she’s got.”
To his surprise, the door opened once more, but again, only by a few inches. “What’s the rest of your story?”
He couldn’t see her; only triangulate her position from the sound of her voice. She was sitting on the inside of the door, opposite of him. How long had she been there? Why hadn’t he heard her? Felt her?
His emotions were overriding his skills.
Dangerous territory.
“I’m listening,” she said. Her voice was flat. “You have two minutes.”
Taking a breath, he searched for where to start. “I was sent after a woman, to take her out. Her file said she was a hacker selling defense intel to the Chinese. I had a whole folder of offenses to verify her traitorous activities. When I got to my setup point, I saw something that stopped me. Made me question an assignment for the first time ever.”
“What?”
“She was pregnant.”
Silence.
“I got closer, watched her for a while,” he went on. “She was living mostly off the grid. No computer, no cell phone, not even a TV. The facts I had in her file didn’t ring true. She seemed to be avoiding electronics, but why? I went back to my spot where my rifle was set up, tried to put it out of my mind. Tried to do my job. I looked down my scope and put my finger on the trigger, and…”
“You didn’t kill her.”
Smart. Intuitive. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Who was she?”
“I broke into her house and interrogated her. Turned out, she’d been in the program with me. Sh
e was one of us.”
“A super soldier?”
“She wasn’t crazy, didn’t have any adverse side effects.”
“Why did Norman want her dead then? Because she got pregnant? Was he worried the baby would have side effects from the drugs?”
“The only side effect would have been because of the father, not the mother.”
“Who was the father?”
Trace let her chew on it a minute, and sure enough, that smart, intuitive brain of hers figured it out. “No. Are you saying? Linc Norman…?”
“That’s what she claimed. She had graduated from the program, like me, and went to work for a top-secret agency under Norman called Command & Control. Her thing was languages and cyber security. Next thing she knew, she was summoned to some cabin in Vermont. The president was there with a couple of Secret Service agents, but that was it. He offered her champagne, talked about all the good she was doing in the world, all the enemies of State she was going to eliminate. Her first target was a Chinese hacker. Norman gave her the details and the next thing she knew, it was morning and she woke up alone and naked in the master bedroom.”
“He’d drugged her?”
“I was skeptical. Figured she double-crossed the U.S. and hooked up with the hacker.” He ran a hand over his face. “But she had proof. She’d taken both of the champagne glasses and had them tested. Hers showed evidence of GHB.”
“The date rape drug.”
“The president’s champagne glass had his DNA. The tests results for the baby came back ninety-three percent positive.”
“She took the results to Norman and he put out a hit on her.”
“No, she was too smart to go to him. He’d drugged her and raped her. She had no illusions about him becoming a standup guy once he found out she was pregnant with his kid. She couldn’t hide it long from Command & Control, and decided she couldn’t go through with an abortion. So she ran and tried to stay off the grid.”
“But he figured out what happened and sent you after her to eliminate her and the child.”
“I let her go. She went on the run again. I went back to Command & Control with my first and only failed mission. Got called on the carpet by the president himself. I told him I knew the real story and I wouldn’t keep blindly following his orders.”
He heard her sigh. Resignation. “So he branded you a traitor and made up a bogus file on you for Parker to give to me.”
“He sent a couple of other assassins after me, none of whom got the job done. I took them out. His only other hope was to incarcerate me.”
“And the woman? Is she still in hiding?”
“She was in an accident while I was in Witcher.” If he’d been free, he might have protected her. Wishful thinking, since he hadn’t known where she was going, but the guilt still ate at him. He could have done something to help her if he hadn’t been incarcerated. “Both her and the baby died.”
Tense silence. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“The brakes failed on her car, probably because someone fiddled with the brake fluid line.”
A few beats passed. “How did you get out of prison?”
“I was in Witcher for eighteen months, most of the time in solitary. Every time I came out, someone tried to kill me. A chance came along for me to escape, and I took it. Figured it was another ploy for the president to send an assassin after me, but I couldn’t go on in that place. Happened to be Emit Petit, not the president, who was after me. In exchange for busting me out, he wanted me to work for him. I didn’t have a lot of options. Seemed like a better deal than going back to Witcher or ending up dead.”
“And then I came along.”
“Yeah.”
The night closed in around him. His ears picked up the sound of a clock somewhere downstairs, the second hand ticking softly. He waited, not saying anything, not moving, only hoping Savanna was going to open the door all the way and give him a second chance.
She closed it a moment later and flipped the lock.
Chapter Twenty-three
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SAVANNA SWITCHED OFF the voice-recording app on her phone, washed her face and pulled her hair up in a ponytail. The story Coldplay—Trace—had told her rewound and played over and over in her mind.
He’d warned her she wasn’t going to like him once she found out about his past. He was right. She didn’t like him too much at the moment.
But it wasn’t over his past.
He’d been used. Followed orders and then gotten the shaft when he refused to kill a pregnant woman. A woman who was having the president’s child.
The soap opera storyline alone would annihilate the president. He would be impeached, thrown in jail.
But she had no proof other than Trace’s confession on tape.
Which would put him in hot water too. He’d taken out the other patients in Program 24, following his commander-in-chief’s orders, but he’d still murdered American citizens on American soil. If there were no proof of those orders—and she was sure Command & Control didn’t keep a log lying around—his word wasn’t enough.
On top of that, he’d escaped a maximum-security prison. His supposed crimes were bogus, but again, she had no proof. He was a federal fugitive.
What she did have was Parker’s file. A file she hoped would show a secret drug testing program that created super soldiers. Did it also track what had happened to them? If something in that coded mess of gobbledygook actually pointed a finger at the president, that he was running some type of off the books black ops group doing his bidding, uncensored, she was in business.
All she needed was five minutes on air.
And the decoded file.
Opening the bathroom door, she found the bedroom suite empty. Her heart fell. A tiny part of her had hoped Coldplay—Trace, dammit—was sitting out there waiting for her.
The laptop was on the floor where he’d left it. His clothes were gone.
He’s gone.
A hollowness filled her chest cavity. What did you expect, Savanna? You told him to go. You asked—no, demanded—a new bodyguard.
Her legs trembled ever so slightly as she stared at the bed where hours before he’d made love to her.
Sex. We had sex. There was no love involved.
Her heart didn’t believe it.
In just a few short days, she’d come to rely on him and his solid, steady presence. His sudden absence left a void she knew she couldn’t fill.
She’d always been independent, strong. Still was. She hadn’t needed anyone since she was fourteen. The walls she’d built around her heart were tall and fortified.
Lt. Trace Hunter had bored right through every one of them.
A dinging came from the computer. Savanna made her way to the chaise and picked it up.
“I’ve decoded the information,” Rory told her a moment later.
“Good. Send it to me.”
Rory fiddled with some keys and the file appeared in her upper right screen. Then he fidgeted, seemed like he wanted to say something else.
“What is it, Rory?”
“About Coldplay. This information could—”
“You don’t need to explain. He already did.”
“Yeah, he probably told you all the crap, some of which is in this file from your sister. Did he tell you about all the heroic shit he did as a SEAL before Project 24? The people he saved? The men he rescued from behind enemy lines? Did he tell you about Palestine? Bahrain? Mumbai?”
She wanted to ask him to tell her about Trace’s heroics. She had a sudden need to know. But what difference did it make now?
He was gone and there was no way she could fix the mess they were in, regardless of what he hadn’t told her.
Rory took her silence for what it was. “I didn’t think so. You might keep in mind the fact that he was a hero, Ms. Jeffries. In my book, he still is. I was a SEAL once too. Did some wet work for
the CIA after that. Everything I did weighed on my conscious, but I did it for the good of the country. To keep people like you safe so you could enjoy your freedom of speech and go to bed every night in a country free of war.”
Her throat was tight. “I appreciate your service.”
“Words. Those are just fucking words. If you want to prove you appreciate what men like me, and Reece, and Lt. Hunter have done for the American public, then do something to clear Hunter’s name.”
He was about to leave their video chat, but Savanna wasn’t done with him yet. “Let your boss know I’m coming to see her.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“I assume she knows I requested a new bodyguard and there are several things I want to discuss with her. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Savanna closed out the video chat window. Her hands weren’t shaking, but she clasped them tight in her lap anyway, staring at the blue file folder in the upper right corner of the screen
Closing the laptop, she went downstairs. She couldn’t help but peek into the second floor den where she and Trace had done yoga together. Where he’d taken her on the rug.
He wasn’t there. She knew he wouldn’t be, and yet a trickle of hope had made her look.
Maybe he’s in the kitchen.
She chastised herself even as her feet picked up their speed going down the stairs.
In the kitchen on the first floor, her heart sunk a little more. No surprise Trace wasn’t there. Another man with a lean face, an athletic build, and a goatee leaned against the counter with a plastic coffee cup in hand. “Hello, love. Coldplay said you were an early riser.”
His deep-set green eyes mocked her. His British accent turned his hello into el-lo.
“Where is Coldplay?”
“You requested a new bodyguard.” He boosted himself away from the counter and set his cup on the island. “Name’s Henley. I’m at your disposal.”
Didn’t answer my question. Maybe Beatrice would. Savanna slipped her boots on and grabbed her coat from the mudroom. “Henley. That’s not a rock band I’m familiar with.”