by Angel Payne
“No, Oz,” she protested. “Everything’s wonderful. Really.”
I’m just agonizing every minute Shay still isn’t here. Wondering if that pained quaver in his voice has gotten worse. Beyond stressed about the completely cryptic directions that Colton gave them, and trying not to think about them ending up in the middle of the Mojave, instead.
With the telepathy only possible from a best friend, Ryder translated her stress into the most perfect words possible. “Colton, sweetie? While it goes without saying that we all couldn’t be happier with your secret hideout, can you enlighten us how the hell Shay and his friend will find us, too?”
Colton finished his bite from the flatbread pizza Oz had brought, then flashed what had to be his eighth complimentary smile at Brynn for the wine choice. “I-Man and I are a couple of action movie geeks. I banked on him remembering the films that were shot in Vegas.”
Zoe continued with a perplexed frown, along with Ry and Brynn—but Ellie’s eyes suddenly ignited. “Oh, snap on the downbeat! Yeah, it makes sense now.”
“It does?” Brynn muttered.
“Damn.” Ellie pointed a congratulatory finger at Colton. “That’s brilliant, spook man.”
Ry’s brows pushed together. “Hello, United Nations? Anyone there have an interpreter for ‘El Browning Speak’?”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “Sheez, you guys. ‘Eleven from thirteen’. That refers to Ocean’s Eleven and its sequel, Ocean’s Thirteen. There was only one place used for filming in both the movies—the Bellagio. But he also said ‘subtract,’ which told Shay to do the actual math. Eleven from thirteen is two. Going south from the Bellagio by two, you end up here, at the Vdara. As far as doubling his age?” She spread her hands. “Since we’re on the fifty-fourth floor, I’m guessing Shay is twenty-seven.”
A long silence stretched.
Ryder slowly cocked his head at El. “You officially scare me.”
El gave a delicate snort. “I have piercings in my ears, sweet thing, not my brain.”
“You still scare me.”
Zoe, succumbing again to nervous energy, paced back toward the suite’s entrance foyer of the suite. “I’m still scared, period.”
No. She was past scared and now at terrified. What if Shay and Ghid didn’t get here? But what was she in for if they did? Everything still felt in limbo. She still kept expecting to wake up from the dream—
Until reality bashed its way in.
There was a key swipe at the suite’s door. Zoe froze, her stomach lurching into her throat. She rushed further up the entry but was hauled back by Oz, his dark eyes issuing a silent dictate for her retreat. Colton, with pistol now drawn, yanked her even farther back. He pushed her against Brynn, who grabbed the agent’s elbow before he pivoted to join Oz. Brynn mouthed two words at him. Be careful.
That was certainly the slogan of the damn night.
Wrong.
As soon as the door opened and Ghid staggered in, supporting a man who vaguely resembled Shay beneath his cuts, bruises, and wounds, the night was stamped by a brand new refrain. It was ripped from Zoe’s throat on a scream that began deep in her soul.
“Ay Dios mio, no!”
Chapter Fifteen
“Zoe.” Shay hated having to bellow it but the woman was practically tripping over herself with panic and worry. It made his head pound—worse than it already did—to think of the woman keeping her shit together through the hijacking and the mortar drop at the base, only to tizzy herself straight out one of these windows. “For the twelfth time, I don’t need a doctor.”
He finished the order by pulling her down on the couch next to him despite the rocket of pain it sent up his arm. There. Better. Fuck, it felt good to have his mariposa against him once more. A haven of softness, smelling like cocoa, cream, and roses…
He tucked her tighter, regretting that in comparison, he probably stank like a hobo. Ghid had brought him a fresh T-shirt, work boots, some underwear, and jeans, which he’d changed into when they stopped at a gas station to redress his wounds, but a cowboy shower in a roadside john wasn’t nearly what he needed to scrub away the stench from the last four days.
He’d let her go in a few minutes. For now, he needed the assurance she was real, the verification that he was truly free of the ugly cocoon of the last four days.
Ghid, who crouched next to him, grunted approval of his move. Not a surprise. Ghid had his own version of a Zoe. Her name was Melody Bommer. Anyone with half a brain cell in their head would figure it out after spending thirty minutes with the man; Shay had now logged in a little shy of three hours with him. While the idea of the guy shacking up with his mom had been jarring to accept at first, Ghid had gradually won him over. The guy adored Mom so much, he’d snuck back in to A-51 just to bust Shay’s ass out. The lunatic had used the pretext of being some chemical waste disposal dude, curling Shay up in one of his steel drums.
In doing so, the man had saved his life. There wasn’t a goddamn doubt in Shay’s mind about it. If the “experiments” hadn’t eventually killed him, then the despair would have.
Zoe snuggled a little closer, earning a soft kiss atop her head from him and a slightly bigger smirk from Ghid. The man had already examined “the nicks,” as he called them, from the side Zoe was pressed against, anyway—though when Ghid first used the term, he’d glanced at Shay to communicate how he comprehended the word’s irony. “Nicks” could be relative, couldn’t they? Shay had been bumped, bruised, and cut up a hundred different ways just jumping out of a plane to a mission target. The sight of his own blood was nothing new. But there was something different about the experience when watching a “scientist” with high-level government security clearance slice a strip out of his chest, then slide it under a microscope slide and make notes about it…
He washed away the horror by gratefully grabbing the beer offered by a lanky dude wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the expression PUH-LEEEZ. The blond seemed weirdly familiar, though Shay was certain he’d never seen him before.
Christ. What was he “certain” of anymore? The reunion with Mom had been two hundred kinds of weird. And the little chit-chat with Tait after his brother brought him down? Fucking disaster was a better term. Bash, Wyst, and couple of the other guys had been caught along with him, meaning he couldn’t simply blurt the whole truth to T without compromising the entire operation he had in place—and Dan Colton along with it. By the time Tait relented and dragged him into a room for a one-on-one, Cameron hailed him on the radio with disgusting timing. That had deep-sixed any scrap of trust Tait might’ve thought about throwing his way. Tait had hurled the handset against the wall then marched him back out to the hall, happily handing him over to the scientists with the clearance badges.
By then, the bad that had become worse took a nose dive into hell.
So no, he wasn’t sure of a goddamn thing anymore—except the woman still pressed so perfectly against him.
“Hey, hey, heyyyy, Mr. Shay.” The blond with the weird shirt tried crossing hipster with talk show host. Neither worked, which the guy validated by muttering, “Shit. I can be lame when I’m nervous.”
By then, the connection clicked to the voice. “Ryder.” He smiled and meant it. “It’s good to meet you.” Hell. It was good to be alive, period.
Ghid leaned back, nodding his head with what looked like satisfaction despite eyes that glittered with strange green glints. “I have good and bad news, kid. You’re going to live.”
Zoe tensed a little. “So what’s the bad news?”
“That’s the bad news, too.”
Shay really wanted someone to laugh, to confirm he wasn’t as batshit as he felt, since he couldn’t. Laughing at the nightmare felt too much like tempting it to return. Zoe seemed fond of her perplexed frown, and Ryder was a loyal friend in backing her up.
Ghid to the rescue again.
“Hell’s fucking bells.” The man pinched the bridge of his nose but there was a chuckle in his tone. “Mel warned
me about the smart-ass streaks in you and your brother.”
Okay, better again. He could smirk and feel safe about it. “Well, half the show is better than nothing, right?” He let his stare drift out the windows, taking in the glittering city lights. “Probably a damn good thing, too. If that goat testicle who calls himself my brother were here right now, I’d be wanting to—”
“Tear open all the stitches that the spooks’ finest sewed into you?” Ghid parried. “Is that it?”
“Thanks.” He spat it while swigging the beer. The bubbles felt good at the back of his throat, biting at the places still raw from his screams. He forced himself to focus on how good every drop tasted, anything except the craving to tear out the thick black threads holding at least eight gouges in his body together.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Ghid drawled. “Anytime you need a warm fuzzy, kid.”
Shit. The man had sarcasm down to an art. Shay tossed back an equally dry glare and muttered, “Sure. Warm. Fuzzy. Got it.”
Only the images bombarding his mind were the polar opposite—literally. Like the morning he woke up from a drugged sleep in a sub-zero freezer, stark naked, and was timed on how long his body held out until he went severely hypothermic…
Fortunately, rage wasn’t so debilitating. “Cheers, mate,” he snarled, downing the last of the beer then heaving the bottle at the wall.
“Mierda!”
Zoe’s exclamation was a stab of light in his darkness, jerking him back to sanity. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, but when she pressed a hand over his chest, he pushed away, jabbing hands into his hair. Of course, his fingers landed on the long set of stitches there, too. What had those fuckers said? Something about the importance of gathering a “complete sample”? Oh, that was what they called it. Felt like a four-inch scalping to him.
It’s over, man. All over. Open your eyes. Focus on what matters.
He forced his gaze open, lifting it to Ghid, who’d moved to the ottoman in front of the couch. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
If Ghid had a reaction, and that was a big if, it was replaced by another voice, from behind Shay.
“I’m sorry, too.”
Colton.
Shay didn’t want to stiffen but did. His head reconfirmed all the pertinent shit—that they wouldn’t be safe at the top of this glass tower if not for the guy and that Colton had kept his mission a very secure secret for six months—but then there were the facts his gut wouldn’t let go.
Spec Ops had given him over to the scientists without a second blink, which meant somebody way higher than them had approved the plans for him. Probably much higher. But that also meant that at some point, that his file had to be run through the system. Which meant that the CIA had to have a chance for throwing a flag on the play—
A flag that had never come.
Leading to his four days in lab rat hell.
Who the hell had the pull to yank him that far off the grid? And why?
Then there was the shittiest question of them all—the one that demanded to be voiced aloud, despite how it gouged at his lips with more painful incisions than anything the science monsters had done to him.
“Where’d you go?”
He watched all three words drive into Dan like daggers, yet felt no satisfaction about it. The emptiness of that was the worst of all. Their stares twisted into each other. The months of their partnership, their friendship, had tied them like forest vines through the last six months, seeded by a mission but grown through humor, honesty, and trust. Seeing the agony on his friend’s face confirmed the disgusting truth: the shit that had gone down in A-51 was as much a shock to Dan as anyone. Maybe more.
“Christ, Shay.” His voice was ragged. “Where’d you go?”
He grimaced while eagerly accepting another beer from Ryder. “That isn’t a peachy answer for me to give right now.”
“I’ve barely slept the last four days.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Three.” Zoe’s murmur, thick with emotion, tore at him in bad ways…and good. He was surely going to a deeper part of hell for being a little touched that she’d lost sleep over him.
“They pulled everything from the system.” Dan’s assertion tugged Shay’s head back up. His friend waited for him with a nod of emphasis. “Yeah, man. I mean everything.”
“Don’t stop there, ball sack.” The opportunity to use his favorite pet name for the guy couldn’t be better timed. Not if the gravity of what Dan inferred was true.
“As soon as I heard the big brass had sent in that SHRC team to bust things up at the base, I knew it was time to step in and make sure CENTCOMM knew about your cover, so that you weren’t pegged as a hostile in the mess. But when I went to pull up the file on our op, it was gone.”
“Gone?” Fuck. The line sounded like an outtake from every lame confrontation scene from every bad action movie made. But unlike fiction, this worse-than-the-worst possibility couldn’t be fixed by blowing something up in the next forty-five minutes. “Gone…how?””
“Is there more than one way to do ‘gone?’” Dan returned. “They took it out, Shay. It’s not in system backups or archives, either. Somebody deliberately extracted every word, note, field intel, and status report we filed on your mom, her connection to Stock, and our progress on the mission.”
Dan finished by lowering to the other ottoman. Shay didn’t blame him for wanting to sit. He was surprised the guy didn’t use the floor itself as a landing strip. As the shock set in deeper, the idea of splaying there himself gained appeal. “What about the guys higher than you in the food chain? Did you take this bullshit to them?”
“None of them are returning my calls, texts, or emails. And as of three days ago, when I went to the office to take my personal backup to them, my key card didn’t even work for their floors in the elevator.”
Shay braced his elbows on his knees and dropped his head. He gazed down the neck of the beer bottle dangling from his fingers. It was damn murky in there. He couldn’t see to the bottom. Pretty ideal fit for this new piece of grand fuckery, its web apparently stuck to the CIA’s upper ranks, too. “So the last six months of my life are gone.”
Dan exhaled with careful slowness. The sound was painfully familiar to Shay. It was the sound Colton saved for moments he had crappy news to deal and was determined to respect their relationship by dealing it straight. “The last piece of available information I can see is your transfer request off the Seventh SFG, and onto the CIA Spec Ops detail with me.”
“Six months ago,” Shay said.
“Six months ago,” his friend confirmed.
“And after that, I disappeared.”
Once more, he had a crap load of information. And absolutely nothing at the same time.
“So what does it all mean?” The query came from Zoe’s friend Brynn, who settled next to Dan. She was more sober than the first time Shay had met her, and less terrified than the second. And looking a little attached to Dan now, too. That was good. The guy looked like he might need it.
Ghid pushed into the silence by unfurling off his seat with fluid grace, again reminding Shay of a prowling komodo. “This feels like a damn good place to step in,” the man stated.
“What the fuck?” Dan challenged. He chilled once Shay extended both hands, backing him off. Ghid had earned the respect, at least for a few minutes. The moves he’d pulled when helping Shay escape from the science monsters were just short of poetry, special ops style. Shay had no idea if that was where the guy had learned his swagger, and at this point, didn’t care. He was free. If that was accomplished by training from fucking Sesame Street, then all hail to Big Bird for the moves.
“Go ahead, Ghid,’ he assured. “It’s okay.”
Ghid’s nod was far from effusive, though the appreciation was apparent. “Glad to hear you feel that way, kid.” He dropped his head again, this time toward Oz. “Okay, big O, bring him in.”
So much for camping out on the chill button. Shay c
ouldn’t put his finger on what made him hop right back into trepidation mode—perhaps the furtive speed of Ghid’s glances or the urgency in Oz’s steps toward the foyer—but he knew the instinct to slam his guard back up when he felt it. That proclivity was rarely wrong.
And it sure as fuck didn’t let him down now.
God only knew what Tait’s arrival would’ve done to his gut otherwise.
Didn’t stop him from giving in to the fury it unleashed on his senses, anyway. Without a single regretful thought, he lunged across the room. With every step, the wrath kindled higher. Thicker. Hotter.
“Fancy meeting you here, asshole.”
Hurling T’s sneer back at him felt every damn bit as good as he thought it would—right before he took the shitwad down in a clean tackle. T’s answering roar was just the incentive he needed to drive his knee up into his brother’s ribs, making the guy roll to his back. Perfect. He straddled T and pulled back his arm, already savoring how good it was going to feel to ram his fist into the guy’s jaw.
Somebody grabbed him by the elbow. The grip wasn’t very viable, though. It’d be easy to shake them off—
Until the scream pierced his ear. Her scream.
“Are you loco? Madre de Dios, you’re going to break open everything and bleed again!”
He resisted her hold. “Zoe.” Then glared down at his brother, who fired back the eyes and snarl of a pissed-off tiger. “Back off. Now.”
“Not a chance, pendejo.” Her spite would’ve been kind of cute under other circumstances. But her tears? Fuck. They were his downfall, and the smart little thing probably knew it. “Shay.” Her voice rippled with a sob. “Please. Please.”
“Dammit.” If Ghid had been trained on Sesame Street, his growl was pure Oscar the Grouch, complete with the steel lid for emphasis. “She’s right. Stop acting like a couple of five year-olds.”
Shay let go of the hold he had on the classic image of Clint Eastwood plastered on Tait’s T-shirt. Dirty Harry really was lucky tonight. “Zoe, let me introduce the goat shit known as my brother. And ass munch, while you’re down here, grovel a little at the feet of the woman who saved you tonight. If not for her, your face would be removed from your skull about now.”