by Lea Griffith
“How about I tell you to kiss my ass, team leader? How about that?” Ella intoned. “If you hadn’t left me to Dresden, none of us would be in this!”
Finally a truth from her. Her words, the pain in her tone, scored Jude. It was the one question he’d not allowed himself to dwell on—had they left her to Dresden? Could they have saved her?
King moved then, sweeping the front legs of the chair with his foot and causing her to fall back. He caught the chair inches from the ground. Ella gasped and then laughed, the sound shrill after the pain of her admission. “Take off the blindfold, King. If you want to talk to me, this isn’t the way. I seem to remember saving your ass in Spain. Oh, and the ass of your woman… I saved that too. Doesn’t that merit at least some civility?”
“The same ass you put in play to begin with.” King grunted but lifted the chair, reaching for the blindfold and removing it. Ella blinked a few times, accustoming herself to the low level of light. Jude moved around to the side of the chair and watched her, arms still crossed, fists still clenched.
“Really, all I did was confirm what Loretta Bernstein had already given Dresden.” She tilted her head. “Can you guys not just leave well enough alone?”
“Not when it involves Dresden. And not, apparently, when it involves you,” Rook said conversationally.
Ella sighed, making sure it was loud and conveyed how put out she felt. “I just want to live my life. Do my own thing. What’s a girl gotta do to make that happen?”
“Tell the truth,” Jude bit out, his silence a thing of the past.
She hung her head and just as suddenly raised it, spearing him with those eyes of frost. “Ah, Dagan, the great hunter. Keeper. Just haven’t gotten the memo yet, huh?”
“What memo is that, Ella?” Rook asked.
“The one where I obviously want nothing to do with Endgame Ops, and that includes your teammate, Dagan.” Her words were forceful, but the underlying layer had Jude’s ear perking, making a liar out of her once again. Why she persisted with this, he had no idea, but he realized that the truth lay within her lies.
“Just can’t get that telling-the-truth thing down, can you, Ella?” He kept his tone light, but she shuddered.
Yeah, she still felt it. As much as she denied it, denied him and their past, she felt him in her bones as much as he felt her.
She looked away from him. “Let me go, King. This is too big for you to step in and jack it up now.”
Steel underpinned her words. What was going on?
“Tell me,” King demanded.
“Talk to the Piper,” she responded.
King shook his head. “What does he have to do with this?”
“I can’t give you any more than that,” she whispered. “Let me go.”
Jude stepped up to her now and sank down on his haunches in front of her. She stared over his head, refusing to meet his gaze. He took a gloved finger and ran it slowly down her thigh. The muscle quivered, and Jude fought his reaction. “Tell me why,” he urged, watching her face for every nuance she’d give him.
“Don’t do this to me,” she pleaded.
“You’ve asked me that a lot lately, but I’m not sure what I’m doing. I mean, you left with Dresden a year ago, watched as he shot Madoc and killed Micah. You stayed with him willingly and have spent the last year doing his dirty work. You claim we left you with the bastard, but at every turn you’ve run from us. All I’ve asked for is the truth. So what exactly am I doing to you?”
She bit her lower lip. Jude continued to trace down her thigh. “If I ever meant anything to you, you’ll let me go.”
He barked out a laugh and stood abruptly. “Let you go? I never had you, Ella. So let’s cut the bullshit, yeah? Tell us what you’re doing here for Dresden, and we’ll let you go.”
He took a few steps back because the need to rip off those damn ropes and pin her beneath his body was raging. She was lost to him, and his mind couldn’t accept it. His heart refused to accept it. Goddamn, he was a soldier to his core, but he was human too.
She drew in a deep breath and looked him in the eye. That look almost took him to his knees. “Dresden has aspirations of selling Crimea and all of its oil to Russia. I’m here to broker the deal.”
King hissed in a breath. Rook cursed. Jude shook his head. “How can he sell something that isn’t his?” he queried.
“He bartered with Ukraine, vowed protection from Mother Russia if they gave him the rights to the oil in Crimea. They did. Dresden can be persuasive when he has something you want very badly.”
“What did he have of Yoraslav Schevchenko’s?” King asked.
“Schevchenko’s sons, daughters, wife, mother… Dresden had his entire family. The prime minister caved quite easily once he was delivered his youngest daughter’s head on a platter.” Ella’s mouth twisted. “Dresden doesn’t care who he kills, only that it nets him something he considers valuable. In this case, Schevchenko’s three-year-old daughter netted him the oil rights to the Crimean Peninsula.”
“Jesus Christ!” King ran a hand through his hair. “And you work with this bastard?”
She pinned King with a hard, cold glare. “I do what I’m told. As should you and your team. You’re wading into waters you haven’t been invited into. Talk to the Piper, and stay in your lane, team leader.”
Jude cleared his throat and cocked his head. “Is that a threat?”
Ella moved her glare to him. She had developed quite an attitude over the last few months. “I think we both know I can’t make good on any threats. I mean, look at me. Bound and trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
“She’s got you there, Keeper,” Rook said while rubbing his chin.
Jude shrugged him off. “Why were you there with Svetlana Markov yesterday?”
“It’s none of your concern,” she answered crisply.
“What did you pick up at the train station?” he asked, not giving her time to breathe.
“Again, none of your concern,” she replied, that waspish tone making another appearance. “You really have no control over him, do you?” She directed the question to King, but it was Jude who answered.
“He does. I mean, you’re here, right? Not somewhere locked up at my mercy.”
Jude turned his back to her and walked into the kitchen area. He just needed a few minutes to get his shit together, and he’d go back in and have another go at her.
“She’s working with the Piper,” Jude said as King came up at his back.
“I know,” King responded, and it was the last thing Jude expected.
A bitter chuckle escaped. “She pulled an op within an op with us, didn’t she?”
King nodded. “Looking more and more like just that.”
“What is he doing?”
“He won’t tell me. He points and directs, and I lead my team into whatever hellhole he says to.” King’s tone suggested he was beginning to question doing so.
“She’s on Dresden for a reason. We need that reason. She’s been close enough to put a bullet through his skull, yet she hasn’t. That means the Piper wants him alive. What the hell is going on, King?”
“I don’t know, but let’s—”
A muffled groan from the living room sounded, interrupting King, and it happened a split second before the noise of an engine cranking invaded the house.
“Motherfucker!” Jude shouted. He took off, sprinting outside the main door only to see the taillights of the Rover disappearing. “Damn it,” he raged at the sky.
He hustled back into the house and found King tending to Rook. The man had a goose egg on his forehead. “What the hell, dude?”
Rook glanced up at him, and what Jude saw there had him frozen. “She’s not the same Ella. She took me like I was a babe in the manger. Quick, effective, and deadly accurate.”
No way that tiny sl
ip of a woman had overcome Rook Granger. “She was tied up, man.”
“She had a knife. Nobody checked her,” Rook said as he pushed King away. “I’m good.”
Still Jude didn’t believe it.
“She wanted me to tell you something, Jude,” Rook told him.
Jude didn’t want to hear it. “What?”
“She said she’s let you go. Now it’s time for you to do the same. But then she gave me something else…said you’ve got a tail, and they’re watching every move you make.”
King bit out a curse. “She’ll head back to Moscow. If Dresden is selling rights to that oil to Russia, there’ll be a meeting. Rook, talk to Vivi. Have her tap every resource she has to find out where that meeting is and when. Jude? Get Knight and Black here ASAP.”
“On it,” Rook and Jude replied at the same time. “What about the tail?”
“I’ll handle it.” Jude pulled out his satellite phone. “How are we getting back to Moscow?”
King sighed. “Rook, get Vivi to find us transpo too.”
Rook grumbled something, and Jude dialed up headquarters. Once he’d talked to Jonah Knight and gotten assurance that he and Harrison Black were headed their way, Jude disconnected and turned to King.
“They’re on their way,” he told him.
“Do you still have that contact in the FBI… What’s her name? Greta? Gerta?” King asked.
Jude rubbed his jaw. “You mean Georgia?”
King waved a hand in the air. “Whatever, but yeah, her.”
“I haven’t talked to her in a couple of years, but I’m sure she’ll answer my call,” Jude replied. He’d dated Georgia on and off two years ago. Once he’d seen Ella Banning, he’d never had another thought about Georgia until King had just mentioned her.
“Call her. I need to know everything she can get me on Noah Caine,” King ordered. “Oh, and I’m going to contact Chase. Have him be on the lookout for Abrafo Nadege in Burundi. He’s in Dresden’s pocket, and I want to know why. What does he have or supply Dresden with that makes him valuable?”
“Who is that?” Jude questioned.
“Nadege? He’s an African warlord who hit the radar last month. Chase mentioned in his last report that he’d discovered intel while questioning a local mercenary. The merc mentioned a link between Nadege and Dresden. Don’t know if Nadege is working for or with Dresden.”
“And he just gave up that info out of the goodness of his heart, huh?”
“Chase did mention he had the merc spread-eagle in a wooden chair and a ball-peen hammer in his hand,” King shrugged as he answered with a dry tone.
Jude nodded. “Now tell me why we’re researching the Piper.”
“He’s withholding information from us. If he won’t give it, we’ll take it. I’m not losing her again, Jude. I’m not losing any more of my men because he’s playing games with my team.”
“Give me more than that, King,” Jude requested.
“Like you gave me on Ella?”
Ouch. Point to his team leader. “He’s pulling her strings, and it’s torturing her.”
King’s head swiveled to Jude. “Where did you see him?”
“In Sarajevo.”
King’s brows lowered. “And you’re just now telling me this?”
“Ride’s here,” Rook said, jogging back up to them from the road. His arrival saved Jude from having to answer.
“You’ll tell me about Sarajevo, Jude,” King ordered.
Jude nodded and watched as a dilapidated truck made its way down the dirt road toward the farmhouse.
“House is clean?” King asked Rook.
“Yep. Let’s go.”
Jude, Rook, and King all loaded up. The arrival of the truck had saved Jude that time. Before the night was out, he’d told King everything—how his last months before they’d rescued Allie from Savidge in Beirut had been spent doing everything he could to discover the woman with eyes of frost and a bullet scar at her temple.
King nodded a lot, grunted some, and in the end he clapped Jude on the back and said seven words that let Jude know they were okay.
“I would have done the same thing.”
Jude lay down on the cot in the apartment they’d rented on the outskirts of Moscow. But he didn’t sleep. Ella kept running through his mind. Until they could draw a better picture of what was going on, they were simply going to do recon. Vivi was working on getting them a location of the meeting taking place tomorrow.
During the course of their situation report, Jude had silently come to a conclusion: he loved Ella, but he had to let her go.
Before that happened though, he’d make sure she was safe and out of this game the Piper had embroiled her in. Because Jude might have lost her, but if she wasn’t somewhere in the world, alive and well, it would destroy him completely.
He’d lost her once. He wouldn’t do it again.
Chapter 8
There! Movement on the roof of the building across from them. Jude put his night-vision monocular against his right eye and waited. He’d moved to the upper level of the warehouse, picking a window that had been shattered before Endgame ever appropriated the building for this op.
He’d gotten a few hours’ rest and risen prepared to eliminate whoever thought they could follow him. He’d become sloppy over the last months, ignoring the prickle of the tiny hairs at the back of his neck. He’d been so focused on Ella that he hadn’t taken care of the threat.
He must have done something right in a past life or God was feeling favorable, because the fact that he was still alive was either luck or providence. How long had the tail been on him?
Why had Ella told Rook?
Jude was now fully committed to eliminating the threat.
“Come on, you son of a bitch. Give me something,” Jude whispered.
Shadows shifted in the night. Car headlamps offered light and then took it away, making those shadows writhe in the black of the night. Whoever it was, they’d make a mistake, and Jude would put a bullet in their head.
They were Dresden’s. That made them the enemy.
What about Ella? his mind taunted.
His heart didn’t respond. Jude had managed to lock it away somehow. His love for her was now buried beneath a layer of purpose. Purpose to protect her and keep his ass moving. She didn’t trust him enough to give him her truths. The foundation of any relationship they’d had in the past had crumbled, if it had ever been built on anything but straw.
King, Rook, and Jude had talked about the merits of taking the tail and decided it would be better just to eliminate him. Dresden had low-level assassins at his beck and call. He was a crafty bastard who kept his eye on targets for a reason. The assassin would likely have no idea why he was following Jude. So he was going to become a kill tonight.
Jude wasn’t sad. Did he mourn the need to take life? Yes. But life was a constant battle of good and evil. It raged in the hearts of men every minute of every day. If Jude was confident of anything in his life, it was that he was a good guy. Endgame Ops were the good guys.
So anything attempting to destroy Endgame Ops was the enemy and therefore would be eliminated.
As Jude continued to sift through the varying shades of darkness across the street, a separate shadow moved like a wraith over the rooftop, headed toward a point directly across from him.
Through his ocular, he recognized the way the ghost moved—sinuous, feminine—and his heart stuttered. “No, damn it, Ella. Stop,” he pleaded silently.
Her target hadn’t noticed her yet because he hadn’t moved. Suddenly she stilled. And then her target moved, showing himself as he twisted and came up. A passing car’s lights hit the assassin’s scope glass, giving his location away more than his movements.
Jude stood from his perch, knowing he’d never make it to her in time, fear beating thro
ugh his body and making his scalp tingle. He held his breath as the target rushed Ella.
She dropped into a crouch right as the moon made an appearance from behind a cloud, highlighting the blade she wielded. With a swift flick of her wrist, she took out the man’s left Achilles. He fell and she was on him, caressing her blade across his neck with a very practiced, very professional movement. Then she casually wiped her blade on the man’s clothing, stood, and turned to the warehouse Jude was in.
She held up six fingers again, turned, and disappeared off the roof. Nothing but mixed messages. She’d become the queen of them.
Jude took off, sprinting down the metal stairs and out the front entrance. He headed across the street and around the right side of the building. He skirted the corner and came to a standstill.
She’d waited there, facing him in the shadows.
He cocked his head and waited on her.
“He reported to Dresden that you took me,” she said softly.
He nodded. “But he had no clue what you told us, if anything.”
She shook her head. “Didn’t matter. His orders from the moment I reported that I’d escaped became kill orders.”
“Me?”
She didn’t move, and the air between them became charged with energy. “Yes.”
The moon once again played peekaboo from behind a cloud and shone its light down on her face. She was breathtaking under normal circumstances. That she’d just killed to protect him made her the most beautiful thing in Jude’s world. “Dresden wants me that bad, huh?”
“You’re a tool,” she replied.
“For what purpose?” he asked, though he already knew—had known from the moment she held those six fingers against the cab’s windows.
“To hone me.” She wiped a weary hand down her face and removed the skintight hood of the spandex suit she wore. Her hair fell in soft waves that glinted in the moon’s glow.
“For that to be the case, I’d have to be important to you, Ella. Surely Dresden knows I mean nothing to you,” he bit out.
She laughed, and it was low and ugly. “You’re fishing, and it’s not like you, Jude.”