by Misty Evans
A surge of hope smothered her doubts. She forced her eyelids to crack open. “Miles?”
Her vision was crap. She was on a bed, under some blankets, but the person next to her was a giant blur.
She blinked rapidly, trying to bring him into focus. Every blink brought a clearer picture.
Dark hair, flannel shirt, a wide smile. “There’s my girl.”
He turned his face and called over his shoulder, “She’s awake.”
“Miles?” She couldn’t seem to stop saying his name. He leaned closer, the features on his face becoming distinct. The beautiful eyes she loved, the angled jaw, the broad nose. “Did I die and go to heaven?”
In her peripheral vision, several fuzzy figures appeared.
Miles chuckled, rubbing her arm. “Close, but no. We’re at an abandoned church not far from the compound. You’re in the parish.”
Despite the pain, despite the weakness and her blurry vision, Charlotte reached out and grabbed him. “Oh, my God. I thought you were dead.”
Clumsily, she pulled him into an embrace, fighting through the sluggishness in her body. A tug on her arm made her glance at it. She was hooked up to some kind of homemade IV.
“Easy, easy.” Miles held her tight but with care. After a too-short minute, he forced her to let go of him and lie prone again. “I killed the guy who got a jump on us at the cabin and then I came after you.”
One of the fuzzy figures on the edge of her vision moved closer. “You took a serious hit to the back of your head, Charlie.” As his features materialized, she recognized Jaxon. “I didn’t want to give you any pain medicine in case you have a concussion, which I’m pretty sure you do.”
Head concussion. Try three. “I’m pretty sure you’re right.”
Light laughter sounded from everyone. “How do you feel otherwise?” Miles asked. He held her hand and she had to keep squeezing it to make sure he was real. “You have a couple of bruised ribs, and it looks like you sprained your ankle. You took a stab to your shoulder.”
Were the ribs only bruised? The pain was substantial. Didn’t matter. Miles is alive. “I feel like I took a horse kicking,” she said.
Another round of chuckles.
“Everything is wrapped up good and tight,” Jax said. “I think you avoided any internal injuries, so the thing we’re most worried about is your head.”
“Not the first time someone’s been worried about that,” Charlotte mumbled. Although the last time anyone had worried about the condition of her head, they’d been more worried about her mental state than her physical one. “Nico? Did he get away?”
Miles exchanged a glance with an older guy. “A team of SIS showed up right as I carried you out. Nico was down for the count. They picked him up and have him in custody, but…”
“They don’t have the video proving he and his men shot down the plane.” Charlotte sighed. “CB Norris, my handler, has the USB. I don’t suppose you nabbed him? The guy in black? He had a girl with him.”
The older guy spoke. “He disappeared on us.”
“Sorry.” Charlotte squinted. “But who are all you people?”
A round of introductions ensued. Zeb, Parker, Trace, Moe. She repeated the names in her head three times to make sure she didn’t forget.
“We assume Norris took the girl with him,” Zeb said.
Madeena. Have to find her. Norris would use her for the same reason Miles would if he knew her identity—to find her father.
Charlotte tried shifting into a sitting position. The room spun, a fresh wave of pain exploding behind her eyes and inside her ribs. “Damn, that hurts.”
“Whoa.” Miles stopped her and forced her back down. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Madeena, the girl. She needs me.” She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up on her elbow. The floor seemed to roll like a wave under the bed and she closed her eyes for a second, then blinked them open. The rolling stopped, the room didn’t spin.
Better. “I didn’t tell you this before, Miles, and I hope you don’t hate me.” Especially after you told me you love me. “But…”
Miles narrowed his eyes, his lips firming slightly before he spoke. “But what, Charlotte? Spit it out.”
Should she tell him? Come clean?
God, she was tired. Tired of the lies and the secrets. She had to protect Madeena, but she couldn’t lie to Miles any longer. She had to make him understand. “The girl? She knows the man responsible for shooting down your helicopter last year.”
“The terrorist?”
“He goes by Blackwater,” Zeb interjected.
Charlotte licked her dry, cracked lips. “Yes, I know.”
Miles’ voice rose. “You know?”
“That’s what Madeena called him. Blackwater.”
“Your handler, Norris, has been after him for almost twenty years,” Zeb said. “How does the girl know him?”
Sweat broke out along the back of her neck. Everyone was staring at her, their faces now distinct and every one of them clouded with worry. “Nico made some kind of trade with the man. He got the girl as part of the payment for the RPGs.”
“Who is she?” Miles asked.
Charlotte swallowed against the lump in her throat. “She’s Blackwater’s daughter.”
Zeb’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “Blackwater has a daughter?”
Charlotte nodded, keeping an eye on Miles. His face was tight, his body completely still. “From what Madeena told me,” she said, “he has several sons whom he put into his training camps. She’s his only daughter, no better than a dog to him. Her mother died and Blackwater wanted her gone. He sold her in the trade.”
Miles’ gaze was hard. “She knows where her father is hiding out, doesn’t she?”
Charlotte nodded.
“You were going to tell me this, right? At some point, while we were still in Romania, you were going to tell me that you actually knew the identity of the bastard who killed my teammates and that this Madeena could help me find him. Right, Charlotte?”
She needed to sit up and face him straight on, make him understand. She didn’t think the pain in her ribs could get much worse, but it did as she forced herself into a sitting position. Grabbing his hand, she held it tight. “I couldn’t tell you. I knew you’d want to go after her and force her to tell you where Blackwater is hiding in the mountains. I couldn’t do that to her.”
His hand was slack in hers. “Couldn’t do what?”
“Miles, she’s fifteen. If she gave up her father’s whereabouts to you and you killed him, think of the guilt she would live with for the rest of her life.”
“Her father is a murderer. He gave her away like a piece of property to a man who’s done despicable things to her. Why wouldn’t she want to see him brought to justice?”
“It’s a complicated situation, but believe me, she would never betray him willingly, even after what he’s done to her.” She knew the feeling well. No matter how badly her father had betrayed her, she still felt some loyalty to the man. Some love. “You might have had to…force it out of her, and she’s been through enough. Nico is a master at torture.”
“Wait.” Miles jerked his hand away. “You think I would hurt some young girl to get what I wanted?” He jumped up and fell back a couple of steps. “Jesus Christ, Charlotte. I want revenge, but I’m not Nicolae Bourean. I don’t get my rocks off on hurting women.”
“I never said that. I just didn’t want you or her to be put in such a position.”
Zeb rubbed a hand down his face. “But Norris will do exactly that. Force her to tell him where Blackwater is.”
Charlotte nodded. “He will use violence and torture if he has to. That’s why I have to find them. Not just for the proof that Norris set me up and that Nico was working with Blackwater. I have to save Madeena. Besides, my beef with Norris is personal.” She looked down at the blanket covering her legs, picked at a lint ball. “He had my mother killed.”
It seemed strange to s
ay the words out loud. To know that she’d been right all along, even when everyone else had been telling her she was wrong. Deep down, she’d believed what she saw that night was real, but after so many years of people telling her she was confused, she’d started to doubt herself.
“What?” Miles was back at her side. “Norris?”
She gave him the brief details, Miles sitting on the edge of the bed as she relayed the story CB had told her. “I was right all along,” she said with a sad smile. “And all that time, I played right into his hands.”
Miles pulled her into a gentle hug and it felt so good to be held, comforted. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes.
Zeb interrupted the moment. “Norris is a borderline sociopath, Agent Carstons. You shouldn’t feel bad about being dragged into his master plan.”
But she did feel bad. Some operative she was. How flippin’ stupid and gullible could she be? She broke from Miles’ embrace and looked at Zeb. “You seem to know more about him than I do.”
“I’ve been around a whole lot longer than you, missy.” Zeb smiled at her. “Been in this game a lot longer too.”
He was too old to be a current operative. Maybe a handler? “Are you CIA? NSA?”
He winked. “Let’s just say I came out of retirement to help some friends.”
She gave him a nod. “I appreciate that.”
Parker, the woman, grabbed a coat off a nearby chair. “Norris will have to take Madeena somewhere to torture the information out of her. Where would he go?” she asked Charlotte.
Charlotte scanned her weary brain for an answer. “I don’t know where he was staying, and he wouldn’t take her back there, anyway. He didn’t want Orlo to shoot Miles in the cabin because he said he was going to go back there. It’s remote, it’s close to the mountains…?”
“He said that, thinking we’d both be dead by now,” Miles said. “We know about the cabin. He won’t take her there.”
Memories of Nico’s torture flooded her mind. A fresh chill slipped over her skin. “Did anyone see him leave Nico’s compound?”
Zeb’s head came around and he zeroed in on her. “SIS cleared the premises but found no trail.”
The man named Moe spoke up. He had a tablet in one hand. “Satellite imagery of the past few hours shows no vehicles leaving the compound except for those the SIS guys arrived in, and they didn’t report any missing, so he didn’t steal any of theirs.”
“He’s still in the castle,” Zeb said.
“Probably took one of those secret passageways to disappear into,” Miles added.
Charlotte fought the terror the memories of Nico’s torture chamber invoked. The chamber of secrets she never wanted to see again. “I know where they are.”
“WHAT?” MILES SHOOK his head at Charlotte’s ridiculous idea. “You can’t go. You can’t even walk.”
Charlotte shot him a look that said, “watch me”, then yanked out the makeshift IV Jax had carefully put in her arm. “You guys don’t know how to find Nico’s torture chamber. I do.”
Jax made an unhappy grunt at Charlotte undoing his handiwork. Charlotte threw back the blanket, swung her legs around and sat up.
“How would Norris know where it’s at if it’s that hard to find?” Parker asked.
“Who says he hasn’t been in it before?” Charlotte swayed slightly and Miles grabbed her arm and plunked down on the bed next to her. She didn’t pull away, but stiffened. “If he’s been working with Nico all this time, I’m sure he knows more about that castle and its secret passages than any of us.”
“I’ve already been in the secret passageway.” Charlotte’s earlier statement was still rocking Miles to the core. How could she believe he would hurt an innocent girl? He grabbed the set of blueprints from the nearby table, held them out to her. “I can find it if you tell me where it is.”
She shook her head, made to stand. “I’m going. That’s final.”
God, she was so stubborn. Miles stared at her as she wobbled on her feet. Dark circles bruised the undersides of her eyes. Her hair was limp, her bottom lip swollen. She teetered precariously for a second, staring back at him, and in her eyes, he saw the raw determination propelling her to her feet. The driving intensity, not for justice, or revenge, or to clear her name, but to save a girl she barely knew. For the first time since they’d met, he wondered if he was finally seeing the real Charlotte Carstons.
“I won’t ask her about Blackwater, I swear,” Miles said, blocking her from moving away from the bed. “Just stay here with Jax. Let him give you some pain meds, get some more fluids in you. Please, for me, Charlotte.”
She lifted a hand and touched his face. “I know you won’t ask her about her father, but it has to be me who goes. She doesn’t trust anyone, with good reason.”
He gripped her hand, squeezed it. Madeena wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust anyone. “I’ll bring the girl back, unharmed. I promise.”
“It would be easier for her and for you, if I go. She’ll come with me without question. She’ll fight you.”
Her point was valid if that were the truth. He could see in her steady gaze it was. “You’re not healthy and you’re in terrible pain.”
“I’m breathing and upright. That’s enough.”
So stubborn. He let his forehead fall forward and rest on hers, lowering his voice. “I can’t lose you again.”
“You won’t,” she murmured. “I’m stuck to you like glue, mister. You’re never getting rid of me after all we’ve been through. Renalda said we have some difficulties to overcome. Let’s go overcome them and get on with a new life together.”
Zeb cleared his throat. “I hate to break up this romantic moment, but we need to get a move on. A fifteen year old girl won’t hold out long against a man like Norris.”
Parker handed Charlotte her coat. Miles helped her get it on. Jax dropped a couple of white tablets into her hand, and held up a glass of water. “This won’t do much, but it’s better than nothing.”
Charlotte swallowed the pills and gave Jax a grateful look. “Thank you.”
Her boots were next. Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed as Miles helped her pull the first one on. The others were already outside, readying themselves and the van. On his knees at her feet, he laced the ties.
“I can do that, you know,” she said, sipping the water.
He double knotted the first one. “Those bruised ribs might say otherwise.”
“Thank you for everything.” She sighed. “You’re the first person to take care of me since my mother.”
He glanced up and saw tears in her eyes. Finishing up the second boot—he had to leave the ties loose because of the wrap job Jax had done on the ankle to stabilize it—he slid up to sit next to her. “I’m always going to take care of you, Charlotte, whether you like it or not.”
A slim smile crossed her lips. “You don’t have to do this—go after Norris and Madeena. Your team…I don’t like putting them or you in danger.”
“I don’t like it either, but we’re finishing this mission. Together. Nico’s in custody, Norris is going to pay.” He patted her knee. “And we’re going to clear your name.”
“As long as you and Maddy make it out of this okay, none of the rest matters to me.”
“Yeah, well, it matters to me.” He stood and helped her to her feet. “Come on, Agent Carstons, we’ve got some butt to kick.”
Chapter Twenty-one
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Bourean Compound
THERE WERE MULTIPLE secret passageways throughout the castle and its fortresses. Inside walls, under ground, behind fireplaces and bookshelves. Stone crawlspaces sometimes gave way to wood, acknowledging different centuries, different reasons for disappearing from the main areas of the castle. There were complete rooms off of some, others once led under and out of the castle grounds, escape routes in case of siege. As far as Charlotte knew, all of thos
e had caved in long ago.
The stone walls she was now leading Miles and Jaxon through seeped with cold and frost. Charlotte hobbled on her bad foot, shivering deep in her bones.
Parker and Trace were keeping an eye on the entire compound, which was quite a feat considering the place took up ten acres of ground. Each was stationed in a tower, scopes and rifles in hand.
Zeb was in the van, monitoring their movements and giving verbal instructions when needed over their comm units. Moe was on standby, ready to assist with nabbing Norris or running interference should anyone unexpected show up.
The fires topside were mostly out, thanks to the snow, the castle grounds quiet and deserted when they’d arrived. The SIS had left with Nico and a handful of his men an hour ago. Charlotte counted herself lucky she wasn’t with them.
The blizzard howled and blanketed everything in white, but Charlotte, Miles, and Jax were too deep underground to hear it. Flashlight in hand and gun at the ready, Charlotte wove cautiously through the tunnel, praying her hunch was right, but hoping it wasn’t at the same time. There was no good outcome for Madeena—tortured and left to die here, kicked out in the blizzard, or forced to watch Norris hunt down and kill her father. At least if she was here, Charlotte could help her.
The gun felt too heavy in her hand. An H&K P30, it was made for a bigger person, a wider hand. The hammer had no spur and there was no de-cocker button. The only way to release the cocked mainspring was to pull the trigger.
She’d never fired one of these before, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was Zeb’s gun, the only extra weapon they had unless they wanted to go clear across the grounds to break into Nico’s weapon room. Charlotte didn’t want to waste the time.
Noise at her feet startled her and she jumped. Caught in the flashlight beam, a rat skittered away and Charlotte shivered with revulsion. The rats. Those were the worst. Madeena, the poor girl, had made pets out of several of them. They were, of course, always after food, and the kindhearted girl would break off small pieces of her rations and feed them. More than once, Charlotte had woken up to one chewing on her hair, her clothes.