Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6

by Dianna Love

  Silence must have sucked the oxygen from the room, because no one said a word.

  Dingo had never been put in a position of defending himself or his actions. That Sabrina would stand there and allow this ripped the fabric of their relationship. Dingo crossed his arms and decided to see this through, then give her a chance to explain herself.

  Gage was the only man she’d ever gotten seriously involved with and the UK mission had screwed badly with her head. As her friend, Dingo would allow her the opportunity to fix her mess, and he hoped she took it.

  Dingo said, “I saw Valene talk to different people and I understand that she had a ticket that would have allowed her sixty seconds to meet with Tinker. Everyone in this room knows that Valene’s expertise is in antiquities and Renaissance antiques. Now show me why you’re standing there in support of this prick, Sabrina.”

  The prick in question asked, “Are you sure Valene had no ulterior motive for helping the last time you were here?”

  Dingo turned to Josh whose fingers had scrambled his hair that had been nicely styled a moment ago, and he saw no clue in that gaze so Dingo asked Sabrina, “Are you suggesting Valene found the Korean doctor treating the physicists brought over here for a criminal reason? What kind of screwed up question is that? Valene has always been on the right side of the law.”

  “Maybe in the past,” Gage agreed. “But things have changed.”

  “Like what?” Dingo’s temper rarely showed up, but it was boiling closer to shooting over the edge every second.

  “Like the fact that her client list has fallen off significantly over the past three years and that she desperately needs money for her father’s medical expenses? For a special treatment because he’s got a rare lung cancer?”

  No. Dingo didn’t know that, and the fact that he didn’t punched him in the gut. Valene had always wanted to know more about him, but he’d intentionally kept some distance with her, or he thought he had. Based on the sick feeling flooding him, he hadn’t been as smart as he’d thought, and the result was that she’d been in trouble and hurting and he hadn’t been around to help. Could the woman he thought he knew so well actually be committing a crime willingly?

  All these pieces were piling up against Valene.

  Had he lost all perspective on this?

  Or had he spent that much time with someone who’d been playing him all along?

  Dingo answered in a weary voice, “That should explain why she was at the event tonight. She was probably networking for new clients.”

  “With a ticket that cost twelve grand?”

  Dingo had questioned that and even more so now, but he wouldn’t admit it to Gage. “She’s connected in her field, and that means she knows a lot of high rollers. Knowing Valene, she made some deal for it.” The words hurt coming out, but he added, “And she’s gorgeous. This is LA. Could be someone she’s dating gave her the ticket.”

  Sabrina had listened quietly to the back and forth play between Dingo and Gage.

  Josh must not have been dealing with this any better than Dingo, because he said, “Wait a damn minute. That’s why you wanted me to review Valene’s bank account. You two have been investigating all this and you didn’t bring me or Dingo in on it?”

  “Thanks, mate.” Dingo could still count on one person in spite of Josh snooping around in Valene’s records.

  The look Sabrina gave him came with a shade of remorse that colored her voice. “I only found out for sure about Valene tonight, so no. I have not been investigating her behind your back. I only told you about Charlie because... ”

  “You were looking for something to make me back away from her,” Dingo said, finishing her sentence. “But he has been investigating Valene.” Dingo lifted his chin in Gage’s direction. “Before, it was just about me, but now that Laughton tells you something you’re convinced Valene is dirty. Why?”

  Gage said nothing.

  Sabrina asked Dingo, “Do you realize how hard you’re working to defend Valene? So much that you might not be seeing everything clearly?”

  He had one code and that was to take care of everyone who mattered to him, because that number was small and everyone in his circle was worth dying for. He’d never meant to get involved so deeply with Valene, but the truth was that he couldn’t be objective.

  But no way was he saying that out loud.

  He would get to the bottom of all this and find his own answers on Valene. He said, “Want to know what I see, Sabrina? I look at your boy there and I see betrayal that kept him at arm’s length for a while but that distrust is gone on your part,” Dingo pushed back at her. “He’s got you thinking that I’d cover for Valene if she was doing something criminal? And you just believe him? Is that it?”

  Sabrina’s answer came out with brittle edges. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t help Valene if she got into trouble?”

  “Define trouble.”

  “Criminal activity.”

  Had he fallen down some rabbit hole into an alternate universe? “What evidence do you have of her doing anything illegal?”

  Dingo had expected Sabrina to look embarrassed at this point, not as if he’d asked the one question that was going to cut his heart out.

  Gage fished a small remote from his pocket and pointed it at the large monitor behind Sabrina.

  An image came to life with a frozen shot of Rikker in a restaurant having a meal. The silent screen images clicked by one at a time in a slide show of Rikker, then a woman meeting with him. She signed a tablet with a stylus and viewed something on that tablet. The last slides showed them both exiting the restaurant.

  The next shot was another closeup of the woman that had every muscle in Dingo’s body twisting like a cable being tightened.

  And there came the facial recognition software engaged, flashing images until it stopped on a perfect one of Valene.

  Blood pounded so loud in Dingo’s ears it drowned out everything.

  Chapter 21

  Dingo heard Gage’s voice at a distance saying, “You were in LA yesterday during the same time period that Valene was meeting with Rikker. Were you aware of that meeting?”

  Sabrina’s private office spun for a moment then Dingo shook it off.

  “No.” Dingo’s voice had thickened with emotion. She couldn’t be in league with Rikker. “Unlike Sabrina, I’d have told her and Josh right away.”

  Sabrina ignored the jab. “Valene might be in the middle of all this voluntarily. You came flying out here thinking she’s at risk from Satan’s Garden Club, but you’re the one who could be in jeopardy. Valene was here seven years ago when the SGC were in business. Yes, she found leads on the Orion Hunters in a matter of hours a month ago. Satan’s Garden Club is back in business right here in LA again and involved with Orion Hunters, but they haven’t touched her, have they?”

  “Yet.” He bit out the word.

  Josh heaved out a deep breath and sounded sick to ask, “Okay, I’ll play devil’s advocate. Why haven’t they gone after her, Dingo?”

  Dingo sorted through all the evidence at hand and laid it out in his mind. He didn’t give a flip what Gage thought, but Sabrina was balancing on a fence between her loyalty to Dingo and Gage on the other side.

  Dingo would never put Sabrina or Josh on the wrong side of the law, no matter what.

  He just couldn’t accept this.

  He knew Valene. Something was wrong with all of it.

  Gage clicked his remote again and a new video played.

  Dingo watched as the back of Valene’s wavy blonde head of hair and shapely body went strolling down the hall to the ladies room at the event. Next came the back of Dingo’s head, then the brunette he’d talked to who exited the hallway.

  Dingo turned to Gage and Sabrina, holding his hands out. “Guilty as charged. I did talk to her. But I already told you that.”

  Gage said, “Keep watching.”

  Dingo turned back, pointing out, “Josh said the Slye camera went down right before...”
>
  “This video isn’t from a Slye camera,” Gage clarified.

  That meant this should show if anyone went down that hall right before the hit was made.

  Dingo’s heart thumped faster the closer the time on the video got to the hit. Twelve seconds before the hit, Valene returned to the hallway that remained empty until twenty-three seconds after the two shots were made.

  There she came hurrying out before Dingo then went down the hall.

  His heart clenched so hard he thought he was having a heart attack. She couldn’t be involved. He didn’t care what his eyes were telling him. Then he swung around to find Josh shell-shocked quiet, Gage wearing his usual stone mask and Sabrina’s silence damning him.

  “Thought you said Rikker killed the sniper,” Dingo launched at Gage.

  “You said the assassin tonight was shot through each eye. That’s Rikker’s MO, but based on this he might have given instructions to someone else to make the kill in his signature style.”

  “You think Valene is a cold blooded murderer?” Dingo asked Sabrina in a voice vibrating with fury.

  “I don’t know her and I don’t think you do either.”

  Gage interjected, “Just so we’re clear. I’m going to make sure no one sees your image going down that hallway, but not for you. However, I want whatever you have on SGC.”

  That message was clear.

  He wouldn’t burn Dingo for Sabrina’s sake.

  Sabrina and Gage might have had something going on at one time back before their team got burned, but Dingo had no reason to believe that Gage was here in Sabrina’s best interest.

  Dingo might as well get this out on the table to make it clear that Sabrina and Josh were not a part of what he took on his own to do. “Seven years ago, I went inside Satan’s Garden Club to stop them from going after Valene because she’d found information that led me to them, but it also made her a target. I hadn’t wanted her to dig that deep, but she did, with no idea of what she had brought down on her head.”

  After a pause, Gage asked, “Why didn’t they kill her?”

  “Because I took a bullet to protect Garcia just to get inside his circle fast. He asked what I wanted for saving his life–”

  “And almost losing yours,” Sabrina muttered.

  Dingo kept talking. “I told Garcia I’d work for him if he’d leave Valene alone, that she was just a convenient piece when I was in town and it was my fault she’d stumbled on Giuseppe, which was how I found Garcia. He bought it. Not right away, but he made me a deal that if I double-crossed him he’d skin her slowly in front of me.” Garcia had allowed Dingo to heal before he was put through the Satan Garden’s Club initiation.

  “Garcia died along with his three top men,” Gage pointed out. “No one was left to carry on the legacy. Why is the SGC back in business and why LA?”

  That’s what Dingo wanted to know, but Gage was going for a connection. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t mean they’re linked to Valene.”

  Gage shrugged. “The reason I mentioned Valene’s financial straits earlier is because she had a fifty thousand dollar deposit dropped in her account from an offshore bank. That deposit dropped at the moment Rikker was seen walking away from the restaurant.

  “Maybe she took him on thinking he was a new client,” Dingo suggested, but his voice sounded unconvinced even to his ears. He wanted to rub his head but he’d be damned if he’d show any weakness in front of Gage. Dingo’s headache had started six hours ago when he found Orion Hunter and Satan’s Garden Club markings on Fontana’s killer, and it wasn’t letting up.

  Fifty thousand dollars would buy a lot of things, like a ticket to a twelve thousand dollar event. That had to be a deposit Valene took for work to be performed, but what the hell could she be looking for that brought that kind of deposit?

  The knowing smile on Gage’s face said no one believed the new client angle any more than Dingo did.

  Valene had been building a strong business, but even then she hadn’t dealt with the level of artifacts that came with a fifty thousand dollar deposit.

  Dingo had another set of suspicions as long as they were pointing fingers. “How is it you have this film of Rikker?”

  Gage took his time answering. “I have someone watching for any sign of Rikker. We’ve been catching him on traffic cams, but that does us little good when he’s already gone each time. However, this time, the traffic cam picked him up leaving the restaurant. I got lucky that this restaurant runs surveillance cams on all their operation.”

  Dingo would agree that it had been a lucky break if Valene hadn’t been the woman meeting Rikker.

  Gage clicked his remote and new pictures loaded on the screen. Bloody and gruesome torture of two men, but the woman in the third picture was stomach-turning bad. Nude, bleeding everywhere, even from between her legs, she was hung with sharp hooks pierced up through under her arms.

  It wasn’t just bloody.

  Parts of her body had strips of skin literally peeled away.

  Too macabre to look away from and so sickening Dingo wouldn’t be able to eat for a while. “Who are they?”

  “What’s left of the man on the top right is the person who alerted Bergman that Satan’s Garden Club was coming after him.”

  Dingo swung around hard. “What do you know about them?”

  Calm in the same way a predator waits patiently for his prey, Gage asked, “So now you want my intel?”

  “Not particularly, but I want to know what you’re feeding Sabrina.”

  “Dingo–”

  His gaze locked horns with hers and he warned, “Don’t Dingo me. We’re talking about a woman who put her life at risk to help us and save this country, and she gets no consideration for that.”

  Acting oblivious to the standoff, Gage said, “The second man and the woman tortured and killed were the closest friends of the man SGC thinks betrayed them. They didn’t care that neither the man nor woman had anything to do with any of the operations, only that they wanted to send a message to anyone who crosses them.”

  Sabrina’s phone buzzed. She held up her phone, closed her eyes in frustration, then opened them and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  The minute she stepped out, leaving the door ajar, Gage dropped his voice to a deadly level, addressing Josh and Dingo. “Let’s get something clear. Regardless of what you two think, my number one concern is Sabrina. I will not stand by and let her end up in pictures like those. If that happens, I’m coming after everyone involved, friend or foe.”

  Dingo shot back, “Like you protected her in the UK?”

  “I’m working on what happened there.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened, Laughton. Your agency fucked us and you still play ball for their team instead of coughing up some names.”

  “There’s more to it than you know.”

  Josh said, “We’re all ears.”

  Gage’s lip curled ahead of a snarl.

  Sabrina walked in. “What’s going on?”

  Voice smooth and easy, Gage said, “I was just filling them in on how the State Department is after anyone connected to Satan’s Garden Club and they have their own videos that confirm everything I’m telling you. Valene was seen at the event, and my contact in the State Department tells me that right after Valene walked out into the gardens during the event, with Dingo following at a safe distance behind...”

  The bastard paused long enough for Josh and Sabrina to look at each other then over at Dingo.

  Then Gage finished, “That as soon as Dingo was called aside, Valene went back into the hotel, which is where you saw her re-entering that hallway on the video. She had enough time to meet the assassin in the stairway and end up in the middle of the guests with no one the wiser once panic broke out.”

  And Dingo was now sure he’d seen Rikker. He asked Gage, “Why hasn’t Rikker been caught yet?”

  “For the same reason I asked Sabrina not to mention any of this yesterday. Rikker is just a lead to much bigger
fish. This is the closest we’ve come to him since he escaped with whoever freed him in the UK. If you spook him now, not only will we risk losing Rikker, but we’ll lose the person who really did pull the strings on the UK mission.”

  Gage had sold Valene’s guilt all the way through.

  Dingo realized exactly what he had to do for any chance of proving Valene’s innocence and protecting Josh and Sabrina.

  Once Dingo made peace with what he had to do, he turned to face Sabrina. “So now you trust this buggar over me?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said, insulted and hurt at the same time. She never broke down. Never shed tears, but she hurt just like anyone else.

  Josh sighed. “Come on, Dingo. I don’t like this rat bastard CIA agent any more than you do. Sabrina just wants you to tell her that you’re on our team no matter what. The same team we’ve had since childhood.”

  Dingo turned on him. “Now you want me to manipulate her the way Gage does?”

  Josh scowled. “Shit no. Of course not.”

  Sabrina’s throat muscles tightened and flexed. “Gage is not manipulating me.”

  “How would you know?” Dingo countered with the same argument he’d just been slapped with.

  “She knows I’m not manipulating her,” Gage said, “because she knows that I’m the objective one here.”

  “Can’t talk for yourself, Sabrina?” Dingo taunted, a professional when it came to which of Sabrina’s buttons got maximum response.

  Her eyes flashed with threat of injury. “I have no problem saying what’s on my mind and no one manipulates me. Let it go, Gage!”

  “Why? He’s clearly hiding something”

  She turned on Gage. “Stop it. I brought you in here to explain, not to divide us.

  There came the Sabrina that would scrap as hard as someone twice her size.

  But Gage did have to divide them.

  Dingo chuckled, a nasty sound he intended to let everyone know that he’d finally reached his limit. “That’s precious coming from you, Sabrina. Valene stepped in with no questions when I asked her to find a Korean doctor. She then backed me up when Tanner and I were on our own. She played a significant role in preventing a national disaster and you can’t even get Gage to give you one fucking name of who was involved in the planning of our UK op.”