Sitting up, she pulled her hotel room robe on over her boy shorts and tank, knotting the belt with a quick jerk. Reaching under her pillow, she retrieved the gun and dropped it into the robe’s wide, deep pocket.
Exiting her room, Sabrina caught the mingled aromas of coffee and bacon. Church was seated at the suite’s dining room table, pouring a stream of hot water from a pot over a tea bag and into a waiting cup. Reese was nowhere in sight. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to drag you out of bed. Our flight leaves in a few hours.”
Our flight. Sabrina clamped her jaw around the useless string of protests that bubbled up. Church was under the notion she’d be accompanying Sabrina to Yuma.
Church was wrong.
“I didn’t know what you were eating these days so …” she said, drowning her tea bag before giving it a light squeeze. “I ordered all of it.”
“Eating?” she said, as she slipped into the empty chair across from her companion. The table between them was covered with platters and serving dishes.
“Yeah, you know—you’re off sugar. You’re vegetarian. You’re carb-cycling. You only eat foods that start with the letter K. I was trying to be thoughtful.” Church shrugged. “People do that, right?”
Sabrina turned her cup over in its saucer and reached for the coffeepot. “Do what?” she said, pouring herself a cup. “Care about other people?”
“Yeah. Orange juice?” Church poured her a glass without waiting for a response.
Sabrina looked at the orange liquid in front of her and wondered if it was poisoned. Maybe Livingston Shaw sent Church here to torture her for information on Michael’s whereabouts. Maybe Ben didn’t even know she was here.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d know.” Church grinned at her before leveling her gaze on the glass of untouched juice. “Mostly because you’d already be dead.”
Because it felt like a dare and because Church was looking at her like she’d just bested her somehow, Sabrina picked up the glass of juice and took a drink, gulping it down like she was dying of thirst.
“I know you’re dying to ask …” Church lifted her teacup and blew across its rim. “So ask.”
“Why would Ben send you?” Sabrina said, setting her empty glass aside before reaching for a dish of scrambled eggs. “You work for his father.” She piled it high before trading it for a platter of bacon. Food was fuel and she’d need it if she was going to have to deal with Korkiva “Courtney” Tserkov’, more famously known as the assassin Church.
“First off, I don’t work for Livingston Shaw anymore. I don’t work for anyone anymore,” Church said. “Thanks to my brief and decidedly distasteful crisis of conscience over killing your bestie and that baby of hers, I’m a free agent.”
“So what? You got fired?” It sounded ridiculous, Livingston Shaw firing someone.
Church must’ve thought it sounded ridiculous too because she was suddenly laughing so hard she snorted tea through her nose. “Fired?” She shook her head, still recovering while using the side of her fork to cut into her biscuits and gravy. “Not hardly. Mr. Shaw’s idea of corporate downsizing doesn’t usually involve severance packages and exit interviews.”
“So, how’d you manage to—”
“How’d I manage to get out of Colombia without a hole in my head?” Church waved the strip of bacon in her hand like a magic wand. “I just walked off into the jungle and didn’t look back.”
Disappearing is the easy part. It was staying gone that proved to be impossible.
“Fascinating, really,” Sabrina said before lifting her cup of coffee to her mouth. “But none of it really answers my question, does it? Why would Ben send you to help me?”
“No one sent me,” Church said, managing to sound both proud and sad at the same time. “Ben mentioned you’d need some back-up so I volunteered.”
Which meant despite her hasty retreat, Church hadn’t completely cut ties with FSS. “Why? Why would you offer to help me?”
“People do that too, don’t they?” Church said. “Help other people.”
“People?” Sabrina said, stabbing at her eggs. “Sure, people help other people all the time.” She shook her head. “But you’re not a person. Not really.”
“Ouch.” Church cut her a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Is that any way to talk to the person who had orders to kill a good portion of your family and didn’t?”
“Yeah. I don’t really understand that either.” Val and Lucy should have been dead. The only reason they weren’t was because Church had decided to incapacitate her best friend rather than kill her as she’d been instructed. Knowing that did little to settle the unease that tied Sabrina’s stomach into knots.
“Why, why, why … honestly, Sabrina, you sound like a two-year-old,” Church said while she smeared a thick layer of cream cheese onto the top of a bagel. “I let them live for the same reason I offered to help you: because I wanted to.”
“If you’re trying to convince me you’re not a sociopath, I gotta tell you”—Sabrina shrugged—“it’s not working.”
“You might not believe it, but I’m here to help.”
“I don’t want your help,” Sabrina said. Reaching into the pocket of her robe, she pulled out the .45 and set it on the table next to her plate, her hand resting on top.
“I’m sure you don’t, Kitten.” Church gave her the kind of exasperated smile a mother gives a toddler in obvious need of a nap. “But you need it,” she said, flicking a glance over the gun under her hand. “I’m it. I’m all there is. There is no Ben. There is no cavalry. You want to find out how and why your DNA got mixed up in some weirdo murder. That means slipping back into the world, right under Satan’s nose.” Church ran a finger over the surface of her bagel, spreading the cream cheese a bit more evenly. “The problem is, if he gets a whiff of you, you’ll never see him coming.”
“And you will?” It irked her that Church was right. That she needed her. While she’d technically been an FSS asset herself, she’d never been in the field—not until Church had scooped her up on Shaw’s orders and dropped her on Alberto Reyes’s doorstep. Knowing the inner workings of Livingston Shaw’s private militaristic firm was not her forte.
“Of course,” Church said, sounding slightly insulted. “It’s what I do.”
“And if Shaw does find out I’m still alive and sends someone after me? Then what?”
Church sighed. “Then I’ll do that other thing I do,” she said taking a bite of her bagel. “I’ll kill each and every one of them.”
Fourteen
Yuma, Arizona
The last time Sabrina had flown commercial was with Michael. They’d been on their way to Jessup to find the man who’d abducted her when she was a young woman. The same man who’d brutally murdered his sister and her grandmother.
Wade Bauer—her brother.
Half-brother, she instantly corrected herself. Not that it made it any better. Not really. Shooting him the face hadn’t even done that. If anything, it’d made it worse.
She hadn’t thought of Wade or what he’d done to her—not once—since she’d made up her mind and boarded Leon Maddox’s private plane in Colombia. Right now, she couldn’t get it out of her mind.
Maybe it was the plane ride. Maybe it was where they were going. Maybe it was the fact that without Michael beside her to keep him at bay, it was only a matter time before Wade slinked his way back into her brain and made himself at home by driving her completely insane.
She could hardly wait.
They retrieved their bags from the carousel, Sabrina wheeling her stupid designer luggage that probably cost more than a mid-sized car, while Church lugged her appropriately travel-battered suitcase and mismatched carry-on.
She missed her duffle bag.
Letting Church lead the way, Sabrina followed
her through the solitary terminal. Beyond the mirror-tinted glass she saw the dark, tri-level parking garage. Even from where she was, she could see the lot wasn’t even close to full. No one comes to Yuma in August. Not without good reason.
Stepping outside was like stepping into a blast kiln. Hot, dry air blistered against her face and seared her newly exposed nape. Sweat blossomed between her skin and her tank, soaking it instantly, making her want to strip it off and wring it out. She thought of the clothes she’d packed—pantsuits and silk shirts—and suddenly wanted to kill herself.
Church lifted the key fob in her hand and pressed the button, an audible sigh escaping her lips at the answering beep from the dark sedan a few cars ahead.
As soon as Church popped the trunk, Sabrina spotted the requisite metal case stowed inside. Lifting it out, Church spun the dials and the lid clicked open. Inside, on top of the standard FSS fare of cash, prepaid cells, and maps, was another manila envelope. Reaching for it, the woman beside her shut the case. “Here you go, Agent Vance,” she said, handing her the package along with a familiarly weighted box—a gun.
She opened it. Inside was a Kimber .45, standard issues for FSS operatives. She clipped its holster to her waistband before nesting the gun. The heft of it pressing on her hip was a comfort.
Next Sabrina opened the envelope, pulling out a fully stocked wallet, a cell phone, and a set of FBI credentials. It took her a few moments to realize it was real. The badge and the identification that accompanied it. Her picture, as she’d looked yesterday afternoon, was embossed into the ID, along with a raised, official-looking seal that looked authentic. Looking at the image, Sabrina barely recognized herself.
“It’s fully backed. Ironclad. Transcripts. Commendations. Evaluations.” Church tossed the case back into the trunk, along with their suitcases. “For all intents and purposes, you’re the real deal,” she said, slamming the trunk closed. “We both are.”
They drove away from the airport, the AC on full blast. “Is it as hot as you remember?” Church said it like she didn’t know how awkward and strangely vulnerable the question made her sound. She was making an honest-to-God effort at conversation.
Sabrina could hear Val hissing in her ear, Be nice.
“It’s the same,” she said to the tinted window, watching the steady whip of patchy brown dirt and faded green scrub brush pass by them. “Most of it.”
She experienced exactly one Arizona summer before Wade had kidnapped her. One seemingly endless stretch of days that broke triple digits well before noon and didn’t let up until the sun had been down for hours. Kids with parents too poor to own swimming pools ran through sprinklers or played in the hose. If they were really lucky, they got dropped off at the public pool. She’d bought Jason and Riley one of those sprinkler attachments you hooked up to a hose. It looked like a ladybug with spaghetti hair. As soon as she turned it on, the water pressure sent the bug’s mop of mini hoses squiggling and spraying water in every direction. The two-year-olds had loved it, squealing and running through the water in the little patch of grass in front of their apartment.
Happy. They’d been happy here. Safe before he’d found her and taken it all away. Before he’d killed her … and just like that, her memories of this place, of that summer, turned sour.
She felt it. She felt him—Wade—a sudden, heavy weight in her head. A niggling itch inside her skull, like fingers digging into the bone of it, trying to touch her. To find his way out.
It was only a matter of time before he did.
Fifteen
Berlin, Germany
As far as days go, this one had been for shit.
Usually, his days were just boring. He woke up in his opulent penthouse suite and ate an exquisite gourmet breakfast prepared for him by a Michelin-starred chef. Then he showered before donning a suit that cost more than some people made in a year and riding his private elevator to his corner office. There he’d greet his agonizingly proficient assistant and pretend to listen while she gave him the rundown of the day’s appointments, nodding appropriately when she handed him a stack of papers that needed his signature.
Most days, he managed to extricate himself from her grip without too much fuss before holing up in his office until she buzzed him to tell him he was late for a meeting or that he’d missed a video conference.
In other words, Benjamin Shaw was living in hell.
He had no illusions that what he did every day held any sort of importance. No way his control-freak father put him in charge of anything real. No meeting he attended or paper he signed held any significance. It only mattered in the respect that it kept him busy. Out of the way.
Trapped.
It should have been Mason. He was the heir, the one who mattered. The one their father had hung all his hopes on. If not for his older brother’s death, Ben would have been allowed to fade into oblivion. This was not the life he’d chosen, but it was the only one he had.
No use bitching about it now.
“Mr. Shaw,” his secretary’s voice said, filling his office via the state-of-the-art intercom system, “your father would like to see you.”
Ben instantly shot a glance at his desk clock and did a quick calculation. It was just after nine a.m. in Arizona. Sabrina and Church would have landed by now. When Reese left them last night, they’d been getting reacquainted. Hopefully that didn’t involve shooting each other.
“Mr. Shaw?” His receptionist sounded nervous, like she was afraid he’d taken a header out his window rather than spend one nanosecond in his father’s company and she’d have to be the one to break the news.
“Okay, Gail,” he said, kicking his feet up onto his desk. “Tell Mein Führer I’m on my way.”
–––––
Despite the late hour, his father’s receptionist manned her desk, watching him with pale blue eyes as he cut across the expanse of blood-red carpet. “Good evening, Mr. Shaw,” she said in slightly accented English. Unlike his own assistant, who looked like Mrs. Doubtfire, this woman was gorgeous and, he knew from personal experience, more than accommodating.
“Good evening, Celine,” he said without glancing in her direction. “This shouldn’t take long. Why don’t you get naked and meet me in my suite in, say …” He rolled his wrist to take a look at the face of his Jaeger-LeCoultre. It was well after seven o’clock. He’d purposely kept his father waiting for nearly an hour. “Fifteen minutes.”
The door directly in front of him popped open. “You presume too much, Mr. Shaw,” she said in an icy, dismissive tone that never failed to make him smile. They’d been sleeping together casually for a few weeks now. He liked her well enough and she was an invaluable source of information where his father was concerned.
“I presume nothing.” He shot her a smirk over his shoulder before passing through the open door and shutting it with barely a whisper.
Livingston Shaw was where he always was, sitting behind his large, imposing desk. He had an unopened file in his hand. As soon as Ben walked in, his father’s head came up and he pinned him with an irritated glare. Then he lowered the file, flashing the red band of tape that sealed it shut. Whatever was in it was important and he’d just interrupted his father’s reading of it.
Maybe today hadn’t been a total bust after all.
He took a seat and waited while his father placed the unopened file on the desk between them. “Where is Reese Harrison?”
The question was meant to rattle him. If he’d been anyone else, it probably would have. Instead of making him sweat, the question made him smile, gave him a hint of what was inside the file. “Reese?” He shrugged, leaning back in his chair. “Fuck if I know. Haven’t needed him since I flew to Georgia for that meeting with—”
“Dispense with the theatrics, Benjamin.” His father placed a hand on the file. “I know he’s in the US and that he’s doing something for you, so why don’t you
save us both a lot of time and trouble and tell me what it is.”
The file could be anything. It could be an alphabetized list of his father’s favorite animals. It could be the wine list from his favorite restaurant. It could also be a detailed report on everything Reese had been doing for the past seventy-two hours. Where he’d been. Who he’d been with. If that was the case, Sabrina was finished before she even had a chance to get started.
“Doing something for me?” He quirked his brow, giving his father a WTF-are-you-talking-about-now? look. One that never failed to get under his skin. “Like what, exactly?”
Instead of answering, his father picked up the file and opened one of the drawers in his desk. “I had hope, Benjamin,” he said, dropping the sealed file inside. “Hope that with you finally agreeing to a leadership role here, that you and I would, at long last, find a common ground.” He fit a small brass key into the drawer’s lock and gave it a twist, securing the file inside. “That we would begin to heal as a family.”
Ben leaned forward in his seat, every ounce of humor drying in an instant. “Hope? Healing? Are you for real?” The sound that followed could have been a laugh if it hadn’t tasted so bitter. “Let’s get a few things straight. I didn’t agree to be your little sock puppet because I wanted to. I agreed because if I hadn’t, you would’ve killed an innocent woman and her baby.” He could still see Val, Sabrina’s best friend, and her infant daughter. Lucy was nearly two years old now. He remembered that whenever he began to regret his decision. “And the only common ground between us is the three-by-eight plot where I buried Mason. There is no hope and there sure as fuck won’t be any healing.”
“Still blaming me for your brother’s death,” he murmured. “There was nothing I could do for him, Benjamin.” His father sighed. “What they were asking of me would have compromised—”
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