by Kaylea Cross
No. Stop it. It was all a lie.
She’d deceived him. Betrayed him. Now she would finally pay.
He turned for the door, wrenched it open and began barking orders to his men. It had been months since he’d had her. Months since he’d first learned of the level of betrayal she’d dealt him.
She’d purposely made him fall in love with her, manipulating him all the while and playing him for a fool. He’d treated her like a queen, had been prepared to share his life with her, even give her his heart and unswerving loyalty.
Until he’d found out she was nothing but a lying whore who’d used him for her own personal agenda. Leaving him heartbroken and humiliated.
The rage expanded in his chest, spreading down into his gut. No one made a fool out of him. No one used him and got away with it. Not even the Architect.
He might not be able to kill Kiyomi when he captured her, but there were plenty of other ways to make her suffer for the pain she’d caused him.
****
A few hours after everyone arrived at the safehouse outside of Damascus, Kiyomi found Marcus stretching on the floor in his room upstairs. They’d all flown to Turkey early that morning on a private jet, then individually crossed the Syrian border using fake IDs Amber had cooked up for them.
“Here,” she said, offering him a small bottle of water. Though it was November, the weather was unusually hot and dry here in Syria.
“Cheers.” He chugged it then set it down beside him, wrapped his arms around his upraised left knee and pulled it toward his chest, his features tightening.
“Can I help?”
The ghost of a smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. “I wish.”
She smiled back, thinking of last night. She’d crept out of his room before dawn and gone back to hers so that no one would know they’d spent the night together.
Not because she was ashamed or embarrassed. But because this was her first consensual relationship and she wanted to keep it all to herself. Marcus was a private man. She hadn’t wanted to make him the topic of any gossip or questions. They’d both maintained a careful distance on the trip here as well, for the same reasons. “I stand ready to assist you in any way I can, Mr. Laidlaw.”
“That right?” He lowered his leg to the floor and held a hand out to her. When she placed hers in it, he tugged her forward.
Kiyomi went to her knees in front of him, her heart turning over as she gazed into those chocolate-brown eyes. This man had dropped everything, left his quiet, peaceful life behind at a moment’s notice and returned to the very place that haunted him most —for her.
“I don’t think I’ve said it yet, but thank you for being here. It means a lot to me.”
He curved a hand around the back of her neck and drew her in for a kiss. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
Though he was a man whose actions spoke more loudly than any words he ever could have said, he continually surprised her with just how romantic he was, deep down. She kissed him, humming in enjoyment as his lips molded to hers, those powerful arms wrapped around her.
The truth was, being here again spooked her too and rattled the cage she’d locked some of her demons inside. But the prospect of capturing and then killing Rahman once they extracted the necessary intel from him made facing her past all worthwhile.
Marcus’s cell phone went off. He pulled it out, frowned, then answered, watching her. After a moment he put his hand over the bottom of it and spoke to her. “Can you get Amber?”
She jumped up and rushed to get their resident tech wizard. “Marcus wants you.”
Amber looked up from her laptop. “What for?”
“Someone just called him. Must be important.”
They stepped into the room and shut the door just as Marcus was lowering his phone. “What’s up?” Amber asked.
“That was a former teammate. Rory McFadden, the team leader from last night’s raid on the camp. He had a tip from an intel source here in Damascus. They got a signal intercept on a recent phone call that appears to match Rahman’s voice. Apparently he used the term ‘architect’ during the call, and the way he said it referenced a special significance to the person he was talking to.”
Kiyomi’s heart leapt. Was this it? Did Rahman have a direct lead to the Architect?
Marcus held out the phone so Amber could see the screen. “This is the number that received the call. Rory didn’t have a location for me.”
“I’ll run it now.” Amber took his phone and hurried from the room.
Kiyomi stepped in front of Marcus. “Thank you,” she whispered, then lifted on tiptoe to kiss him.
He gripped her shoulders, his expression stopping her cold. “He knows you’re here.”
Rahman. “Does he know where?” The team had decided that she should purposely not wear a disguise while crossing the Syrian border, counting on facial recognition alerting Rahman to her presence—along with anyone else hunting them, like the Architect.
They’d been hoping to learn he’d been tipped off, and then try to track his location that way. But this scenario was beyond anything they’d hoped for, a way to kill the proverbial two birds with a single stone.
“Not yet. And that’s the way it stays.” A frown creased his forehead. “There’s more than a bounty on you. Whoever the caller was offered five million U.S. if Rahman turned you over.”
She smiled, the first real hope of nailing Rahman’s oily ass to the wall starting to bloom in her gut. “He won’t get the chance.”
The frown disappeared as he smiled back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No, he won’t. But that’s more than enough money to tempt a lot of people to start hunting you.”
Kiyomi didn’t respond, unfazed by the increase in the bounty. They went downstairs into the kitchen where the rest of the team was gathered around the table. All except for Jesse and Ty, who were currently outside keeping watch. Everyone waited while Amber ran the phone number through her custom laptop, Lady Ada, and waited for the software to do its thing.
A few minutes passed, then the frown of concentration on Amber’s face eased. “I found something.”
Kiyomi and Marcus crowded in on either side of her to look at the screen. It was hard to follow. Amber had at least a half-dozen programs open, all doing different things. She pointed to the one on the far right. “The call was received here.” She indicated a building in an industrial area on a satellite map.
“Can you verify whether it was him or not?” Marcus asked.
“Already running his voice through my software. But there’s something else interesting here as well.” She paused, looking up at them. “The caller’s number originated in the Atlanta area.”
Where previous calls in their investigation on the Architect seemed to have originated as well. “Rahman used the term architect during the conversation. Who was he speaking to?”
“Rory said the other voice was synthesized. They couldn’t determine the gender.”
Amber shook her head, typing more commands in and checking a different tab. A voice recording came up, two different graphs tracking similarities as the person spoke. “I can’t tell either.”
The program stopped, the red lines on the graphs suddenly turning green. “Wait.” Amber typed some more, muttered under her breath as she read to herself, fingers racing over the keyboard.
Kiyomi studied the graphs, waiting.
Amber sat back. “It’s a woman.”
Everyone looked at her sharply. “You’re sure?” Megan asked.
“Lady Ada is, so yeah, I’m sure.”
Kiyomi stared at the screen. “So the Architect’s a woman?” She’d been so certain it was a man.
“Looks that way.” Amber typed something else. “I can’t get a location for where this most recent call originated. The signal’s been scrambled just like all the others, bounced around all over the globe. I’ve tried to triangulate the previous calls and there’s just no pattern to go by.”
“Now we
can take out Rahman,” Kiyomi said, excitement burning in her chest.
“No,” Trinity said firmly, cutting her a sharp look. “That’s not the mission.”
Kiyomi straightened, frowning. “Yes it was, we—”
“We were going to capture Rahman to get a lead on the Architect. Now we might have one. And since she knows you’re here, we can’t assume she’s going to sit back and depend on Rahman to capture you. She’ll probably send a team after you too.”
“So? We’ll be in and out before they can get there.”
Trinity’s expression hardened. “I know you want him dead. I get that. We all do. But we don’t know yet whether we still need him or not. If we don’t, we’ll take him out—together—before we leave the country. And as of this moment, putting you or any of us at further risk by going after him now, is just reckless. We need to wait and see before we move on him, give Amber time to analyze this further.”
Kiyomi stared hard at her friend, argument piling up on her tongue. But she knew Trinity better than she did any of the others. One look in those deep blue eyes, and she could tell that arguing was pointless. Trinity was team leader. Her word was final, and this decision was not up for discussion.
“He’s going to run,” she warned, desperation clawing at her insides. “He’ll disappear again and next time we might not find him.”
“We’ll find him.”
Dammit, no, they might not if they let this chance slip away. Didn’t Trinity and the others see that? Of all people, didn’t Trinity understand how important it was to kill Rahman now?
Kiyomi wanted to scream. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. This wasn’t the way she’d imagined it going.
“We will get him eventually, I promise,” Trinity said in a softer tone. “But the Architect takes priority, because that’s the only way we end this thing for all of us.”
Meaning, Kiyomi’s personal revenge was a distant second and would just have to wait—if it happened at all.
Resolve crystalized in the pit of her stomach. She was done waiting. And targeting Rahman as a team wasn’t what she wanted anyway.
It wasn’t enough for him to just die. It had to be just him and her in the room when it happened. He had to think he was triumphant first. That he’d won and she was defeated, cowed by fear and helplessness.
Frustration burned in her chest. They had his probable location. After last night’s raid on the camp, he’d be more paranoid than ever about his security. His team would move him soon, likely sometime in the next few hours once it was dark, and then she might not get another chance.
If she was going after him, it had to be now, before it was too late.
She stayed quiet, lost in her thoughts as the others began talking amongst themselves while Amber pulled up the satellite view of the building Rahman was in and enlarged it. Kiyomi quickly assessed the security surrounding it, the entry and exit points, making mental notes.
“I’m starving,” Megan announced a while later. “Anyone else in for kabobs?”
Ty went out and got them all dinner, and the whole time he was gone, Kiyomi continued to formulate her plan. Two minutes after he walked through the door with the takeout bags, Amber got another alert from Lady Ada.
The entire room went quiet as everyone focused on the laptop screen. “I’ve got a possible location for where the call to Rahman originated,” Amber murmured, eyes scanning rapidly across the screen as she analyzed the data.
Next she pulled up a satellite map and entered an address. A residential neighborhood appeared on screen. She zoomed in on the target house. A large, private mansion surrounded by manicured grounds.
“Where is that?” Eden asked.
“Newnan, Georgia.” Amber looked at Trinity. “Suburb of Atlanta.”
A bubble of hope rose inside Kiyomi. Maybe this was the break they needed to get the Architect. Maybe now they could go after Rahman, seize his cell and other electronics.
Then put him down like the rabid animal he was.
Trinity nodded once. “We’ll start the search there. I’m sending Briar and Georgia there to do recon.”
Two Valkyrie snipers Trinity was close with, and they were both recon experts. Kiyomi and the team were lucky to have them to lend support back in the States.
Pulling out her phone, Trinity started to dial a number then stopped, her gaze slicing to Kiyomi. “Rahman’s still a no-go for now.”
Dammit! It took all Kiyomi’s restraint to bite back an angry retort. Arguing now was not only pointless, it would also tip her hand. Trinity was right about one thing, though. Risking the team’s safety now was reckless.
But Kiyomi didn’t need a team for what she had in mind.
She’d made her decision. All she had to do now was put her plan into action.
After Ty handed out the food, Kiyomi sat quietly beside Marcus and ate, ruthlessly shoving aside the twinge of guilt and did what she had to. A chill swept over her at the thought of confronting Rahman again if her plan worked. The increase in bounty for her made every move she made here more dangerous.
She brushed it aside, because there was no help for it. This might be her only shot, and he wouldn’t dare kill her because he was too afraid of the Architect and wanted the bounty money so he could buy and sell more women, weapons and drugs.
As everyone finished their meal she glanced around at the others. She and her Valkyrie sisters had been subjected to too much throughout their lives. They all deserved their freedom and their lives back. If she could secure that for them by getting a definitive lead on the Architect from Rahman before killing him, then she was duty bound to do so.
They’d all risked so much to save her. She owed them. And Marcus too, enough that she would spare him what came next.
“Who’s on watch next?” Jesse asked across the room before popping a bite of chicken into his mouth. “Amber and me?”
“No, I want Amber to keep working on these leads,” Trinity said. “Eden and I’ll take the next shift. I’m still finalizing the op in Atlanta with Briar and Georgia.”
And there it was. The perfect excuse.
Kiyomi waited until Trinity and Eden went upstairs. While they grabbed their gear, she gathered what she needed and quickly tucked it away in the bathroom. As soon as she heard the back door close, she jogged back downstairs and made sure the others could see her as she checked her pistol.
“What are you doing?” Marcus asked suspiciously.
She holstered her weapon at the small of her back. “I’m watching the northwest side for Trin while she finalizes things with Briar and Georgia.”
The look he gave her told her he didn’t believe a word of it. Summoning her acting skills, she shot him an annoyed frown. “Look, they’re waiting for me, and I need to keep busy right now. At least this gives me something to do instead of sitting around being pissed off.”
He didn’t say anything. She sighed in frustration and held her phone out. “Wanna call her yourself and check?”
He stared at her for a long moment, so long she worried he might actually check with Trinity. But she maintained her expression and finally he relented with a nod. “When I check in with you, you’d better answer,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m a grown-ass woman. Don’t ever treat me like a child.” As she strode for the door the other four didn’t even look up at her.
Slipping out the back, she made sure Trinity and Eden were gone before going to the fence. She wasn’t sure when Marcus planned to check in with her, but all she needed to make this work was a twenty-minute lead.
Scaling the fence, she hopped down and hurried out of view, whispering under her breath as she thought of how Marcus and the others would react when they learned she was gone. “You left me no choice.”
Chapter Thirteen
Marcus made himself wait a full fifteen minutes before texting Kiyomi, so it didn’t seem like he didn’t trust her at all on this. Are you in position? he asked.
She responded seconds later. Yes.
Relief slid through him. He’d pissed her off earlier, but he wasn’t sorry. His whole purpose for being here was to keep her safe, even if it meant protecting her from herself.
He started to put his phone in his pocket. A niggling sense of unease made him text Eden, not wanting to interrupt Trinity while she was sorting out the Atlanta op. You in contact with Kiyomi?
No. Why?
Dread trickled through him. Is she watching the northwest?
No. She’s still at the house.
The dread turned to fear.
He dialed Trinity, his pulse thudding in his ears. “Is Kiyomi with you?” he demanded when she answered.
“No. Why, what’s going on?”
She’d lied to him. Looked into his eyes and fucking lied to him. Christ! “Did you ask her to pull security with you?’
“No. Marcus, what—”
“She’s gone.” A shot of adrenaline burst through him. Ty, Megan, Jesse and Amber were all staring tensely at him now. “And we all know where she went.”
Fucking hell. She’d gone after Rahman. Alone.
“Christ,” Trinity hissed.
Marcus dragged a hand over his face, thinking fast. Shite, he’d known she was too quiet at dinner, and she’d given up arguing with Trinity much too easily.
“When did you last see her?” Trinity asked.
“About eighteen minutes ago, give or take.” Shite. Way too long. Kiyomi had an almost twenty-minute head start on them. They wouldn’t be able to stop her in time.
“We’re heading back now. Be ready to move when we get there.”
“Aye.” As soon as he rang off, he dialed Kiyomi’s mobile. It kept ringing, didn’t even go to voicemail.
Fear ground in his gut, eclipsing the anger. He hated that she’d done this, even though he understood it on a personal level. Revenge was a powerful motivator.
Crossing the room in three strides, Marcus pulled Amber’s laptop toward him. “We have to stop Kiyomi. This is the fastest route to Rahman. If he’s still there,” he added, tracing the route on the satellite map on screen with his finger. She would have stolen a vehicle. Something small, nondescript and maneuverable.