Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel

by Stephanie Tyler

  And the song remains the same. “But it wasn’t.”

  “No.”

  “So according to you, the mercs came into the restaurant and started shooting and you just left Chambers and shot at the mercs and then ran?”

  “Samuel was shot. I saw him go down and I thought …” she trailed off, as if not wanting to tell the rest of the lie, because she knew Chambers wasn’t dead.

  Kell stared at her as if willing something close to the truth to spill out. She wasn’t completely lying, though—just not telling the whole story.

  And although she was doing a hell of a job, he knew the lies were beginning to trap her. She didn’t let on, still appeared a little shell shocked from the earlier incident in the alley. She was looking at him as he stood and walked toward her, gasped when he turned her chair roughly to face him.

  “Are you bullshitting me?” he demanded, and it was so easy to let the animal in him rise up, to forget that he was supposed to be calm and civilized at times like this.

  It was so much better when he was alone with his weapons, his mind only on the mission. Women got in the way. More so when they were lying.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are fucking with our lives here,” he growled. “Every bit of intel you give me needs to be the absolute truth or we could all die.”

  The harshness of his words broke through her tough exterior and the fear he’d seen in her eyes last night returned.

  Good.

  Even though it made him wince internally. Also good.

  “You think I’ve been lying to you?”

  “Yes,” he told her bluntly, and instead of getting angry, she nodded.

  “I don’t know how else to make you believe I had nothing to do with these men. And I certainly had nothing to do with the murder of my family—my God, who would do something like that?”

  He didn’t want to tell her that money and revenge did strange things to people.

  “I had nothing to do with the murder of my family,” she repeated when he said nothing.

  “But you were left alive.”

  “And I live with that guilt every day,” she said fiercely. “Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

  He did, but he sure as hell wasn’t telling her that. “Come on,” he said, then walked over and opened the door leading to the garage.

  “Where did Reid go?” she asked again, more warily this time—and that’s right, keep her off balance. She was ready to spill, and when she saw what he planned on showing her, she would.

  “Come on.” His voice was impatient. She followed him, let herself into the passenger’s side of the truck, and for a long moment he thought about cuffing her but decided against it. For now. But he had them in his pocket, just in case.

  They rode in silence. He knew Chambers’s house was twenty minutes away, thanks to the stolen GPS system now sitting on the dash of the truck.

  When they drove up the steep hill that allowed them to look down on Chambers’s house, Kell cut the lights and the engine and looked through a pair of binoculars before handing them to Teddie.

  “What are these for?”

  “Look into the lower windows,” he said.

  “What’s this about?” she asked as she brought the binoculars up to her eyes and trained them where Kell had directed.

  When she stopped cold, he knew he didn’t have to answer her, but he did anyway.

  “It’s about the truth,” he said. “Maybe you want to knock on the door, say hello. Apologize for trying to kill him.”

  She looked into the window for a long moment, completely silent, her body language not changing. And then, finally, she lowered the binoculars to her lap and turned to look at him. “If I’d wanted Samuel dead, he would be. I had plenty of opportunity.”

  “Since you’re such an amazing one-woman show, maybe I should just leave you here to fend for yourself.”

  She didn’t answer, but when he leaned across her to push open her door, she was most definitely surprised.

  “Go,” he told her. And he wasn’t kidding.

  Could she call his bluff?

  When Teddie looked into his eyes, she caught a flicker of the dangerous beast that lay underneath. Well hidden and ready to strike. She had a feeling it was the end of the line for her evasiveness. She’d pushed it too far already, and it was as stupid as prodding a sleeping lion.

  She pulled the truck’s door closed. “We shouldn’t stick around here long. I’m sure he has surveillance.”

  “We need to wait for Reid. But you have five seconds to start talking or you’re out.”

  “Reid’s here?”

  “Four seconds.”

  He wasn’t kidding. “My father told me something about Samuel.”

  “Let me guess, the marshals don’t have the info you’re about to tell me?” Kell asked, and she did hate him right then, would hate him even more when he knew everything. She didn’t doubt he would pull every last secret from her, and to think about bending like that made her ache in strange places.

  She’d never told anyone what Samuel had tried to do to her when she was just seventeen—the sexual assault she’d fought off—and she couldn’t start there with Kell. It wouldn’t provide proof of anything anyway. Instead, she’d admit why she really went to meet Samuel in the first place.

  “My father told me not to say anything to anyone, that it was too dangerous, but he’d discovered that there was a rash of kidnappings of wealthy Americans for ransom that happened every time he moved to a new place for diplomatic service. He believed Samuel was actually masterminding the kidnappings. And I think Samuel murdered my father because of it.”

  Kell punched the steering wheel and swore. “You think Chambers set up your father?”

  “Yes. My father had believed for a while that it had to be someone in the diplomatic community aiding and abetting in the kidnappings of wealthy and influential Americans. Typically, they would register with the embassy in case they needed something.”

  “So someone who had that information would know when they’d be arriving.”

  “Right. And they were being kidnapped right from the airport—no signs of struggle, so it looked like they went with the kidnappers willingly. They probably thought they were getting into a waiting chauffeured car that would take them to their destination. It happened in the last three countries where my father worked. He felt targeted. He worried for our family. He suspected he was in danger and wasn’t sure he was getting help from the authorities, because at that point, nothing had been done. The night after he told me, he was killed.”

  She blinked a few times but didn’t cry.

  “Why did your father think Chambers was behind the kidnappings?”

  “My stepmother was having an affair with Samuel.” She whispered it, but it didn’t hurt any less to say it that way. “She was the leak.”

  “But you have no proof.”

  She knew about Samuel’s manipulation of the women in her family—for her, that was enough. “My father had no reason to tell me all this, no reason to lie. Samuel and my father went to school together, with my mom. The three of them were extremely close.” It made the betrayal that much worse, and her voice broke. But she swallowed the sob—she would not cry. Tears hadn’t helped when her mother died or after her father was killed, and they would do nothing now but weaken her resolve. Weaken her.

  “My father’s killers needed to be brought to justice,” she insisted.

  Kell didn’t look as convinced. “You’re in deep shit, Teddie.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she snapped. “What’s Reid hoping to find?”

  “Something that proves what you just told me.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure Samuel would just leave that evidence lying around.” She crossed her arms and turned away from him, but Kell wasn’t having that. He physically turned her back to face him, holding her by the shoulders.

  “I don’t understand what you were thinking.”

&nbs
p; “I was going to force Samuel to confess.”

  “You didn’t think he’d bring the mercs in to get you?”

  She had. But her plan had involved using Samuel’s attraction to her, even though the thought repulsed her. “I had a plan,” she said weakly.

  “Your plan blew up in your face—and consequently, ours.”

  “Sorry that I’m not as experienced in covert operations, but I still managed to find out what I needed to. Because Samuel would never have called those mercs into the restaurant if he hadn’t been involved with them—that was no coincidence.”

  “We’ve got a little more experience in shit like this than you do, so you might want to give a little less lip and a little more thanks.”

  “Thanks? Thanks for what? When you made me strip down for you? Or when you got me involved in a fight that wasn’t mine? This is your game, Kell, and I don’t know how to play it.”

  “I don’t know about that, Teddie. You’ve been playing it pretty well since the second we met.”

  “I’m not playing you,” she insisted. “I’m saving my own ass, the way I’ve done since Mom died. I’m sorry if that doesn’t suit your needs, but it sure as hell helps mine. I can’t play the sad little victim for you—can’t and won’t. So do whatever you have to do to me; I can take it.”

  “You sure about that, honey?”

  Kell’s voice was gruff, his eyes wild, the way they’d been whenever things got heated between them.

  “You’re just pissed because you’re attracted to me, because you felt something when you touched me,” she told him, and she’d surely felt it, too. His fingers had practically seared her skin and she was both angry at him and left wanting more.

  The heated anger had more than a slight edge of lust to it, on both their parts. And he was so close, his touch hot where his fingers brushed the bare skin on her neck where the too large borrowed T-shirt pushed off her shoulders.

  She wanted more, but to give in now …

  Kell didn’t let her make that choice. He moved closer for just a moment and then he pulled away, broke the contact between them, but the sizzle didn’t leave this time.

  He was still too close yet she put her hands together on the console between them as if prepared to move into his seat, his lap, and finish what he’d started.

  And then the door opened and Reid popped his head in. “Sorry to interrupt this special moment, but we need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Fuck you,” Kell muttered under his breath as he moved away from Teddie.

  Still, Reid’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Without asking, Teddie moved into the back of the cab to let him sit next to Kell, and Reid stared between the two of them and shook his head.

  Kell backed slowly down the slight embankment without starting the truck up and she said a silent prayer that they’d escape Samuel’s notice.

  Apparently, someone was heeding her prayers, because they got to the main road and beyond without incident. There was silence for most of the ride, beyond Kell and Reid talking in short bursts in acronyms she didn’t really understand.

  Within half an hour, they were back at the safe house—but their conversation was far from over.

  Riley didn’t ask about Crystal again until they got home. Dylan locked the door behind him and put on the security alarms and set the cameras, and yeah, this would take away any chance of a honeymoon for right now.

  The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Crystal. “Can we enjoy our first week of married life without drama?”

  “Apparently not,” she mused. “And be honest, you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Most of the time, that was true. Tonight, losing himself in Riley was all he had on the agenda. But Crystal’s call had ruined all that.

  How long had it been? At least five years since he’d seen him, ten since they’d first met, and at some point in there, Dylan recognized Crystal for the sociopath he was. Learned from him, screwed him over but good and then moved on.

  Apparently, Crystal held a hell of a grudge.

  Dylan was able to put Riley’s questions off a little longer when a call came in from Vivi, who was checking in for Kell and Reid. He’d known she’d be giving the men intel, and hearing the plans for their next moves eased his mind slightly.

  An earlier call from her had confirmed his worst fears. Kell had been attacked by men who knew his record, and in conjunction with Crystal’s phone call, it was too big a coincidence to actually be one.

  Crystal was working his magic and Dylan needed to conjure up some of his own.

  It had been a long time since he’d had to play as dirty as he would have to with Crystal. But since he’d been taught by the man, he’d picked up more of his tricks than Crystal would like him to know.

  “Okay, so,” Dylan started, and then the alarms blared and both he and Riley had their weapons out and trained on Cam, who’d broken in—probably right after Dylan called him—and stood in the hallway, pissed as hell and prepared to help Dylan explain this shit to Riley, maybe, or maybe it was to kick Dylan’s ass for not preparing for this eventuality.

  “Should’ve fucking killed him when you had the chance in Jakarta” were Cam’s first words to him, and yeah, this was going to be a long night.

  “Can we get this over with so I can consummate my marriage?” Dylan growled as he lowered his weapon, and Cam broke into a smile and then said, “No.”

  Riley said no at the same time and Dylan groaned and sank into the couch.

  He noted that his new wife was still holding her weapon, and a little too close to him for comfort.

  “He hasn’t told me anything about Crystal,” she told Cam, and proceeded to fill him in on the phone call she’d received.

  “Why don’t you tell her about how he nearly killed you—and when you got the upper hand, you let him walk?” Cam prodded.

  “I didn’t exactly let him walk,” Dylan reminded him. He’d been hoping the Albanian Mafia could do the job for him.

  “Start at the beginning, you two,” Riley said with a hard knock of her palm on the table to focus them on her. Her ring made a noise and Cam looked between it and Dylan and made a well, get to it motion.

  “John Crystal was my mentor,” he started. “I did my first black ops mission with him. For him. And I liked everything about it. At that point, Crystal was an honorably discharged former Force Recon Marine. He was a few years older. Had a lot of contacts. Gave me enough money to keep Cael and Zane in good shape for a while. For a few years, things were fine, until his older sister was raped and then murdered by three men while we were on a job in Bosnia. He wasn’t the same after that. He started playing God. Hell, he was probably always a sociopath. Maybe I was one step away myself—maybe we all are. But I was starting to realize I wasn’t a team player.”

  Cam snorted and Dylan shot him a look.

  “What? You had to come to that realization?” Cam asked, and Dylan ignored him. Damn, he’d been young. Hungry and so eager and Crystal had been a willing teacher, for a price. Crystal had a ton of contacts. Experience Dylan wanted. He’d promised Dylan the world, if Dylan would continue to work with him.

  But, like Crystal himself, following orders was never in the cards for Dylan Scott. At least not for long. “I tried to just walk away, but he wouldn’t have that. Instead, he set me up, told me he’d let the Albanian mob think I’d stolen three million dollars from them. He stole the money, of course, and was already halfway to pinning it on me and so I turned it around on him,” Dylan admitted. “It forced him to go into hiding.” Not before Crystal had confronted him, though.

  “Should’ve killed him,” Cam muttered again, and Riley was simply staring at him.

  “He came back wrecked after his sister was killed.”

  “When an animal goes rabid, you put it down,” Cam persisted.

  “We’re all one step away from that on any given day,” Dylan said evenly. “Killing him then would’ve made me just like him, dammit
.”

  “And turning him over to the Albanians wouldn’t?” Riley asked softly, the way his conscience always did when he wondered if killing Crystal would’ve been more humane.

  In those days, Dylan had been anything but. And so he poured himself a Scotch before he answered Riley, albeit indirectly.

  “It was a good life. Money. Women. Action. It was perfect for someone like me. I think even Caleb and Zane couldn’t have held me back, especially once they were old enough to fend for themselves. The lure of that lifestyle—when you want it—can be the most seductive mistress in the world.” He took a long swig of the Scotch, letting it burn a deliciously slow path to his belly. “I’ve hurt a lot of people. I’d like to think most of them deserved it. But I might’ve started to love my job a little too much. I started … no, I was an island. But you dragged me back, you and Cam and now …”

  “Are you happy, Dylan?” Riley asked him quietly. “It’s hard to leave that solitary life behind.”

  Riley had, easily, because she’d never really wanted it in the first place. Her life in the spy game had focused on revenge, and while she was good at what she did, having a better reason to do it suited her.

  These days, when she helped people, she practically glowed.

  “I’m happy, Riley—in a way I never thought I could be. But back then … I couldn’t kill Crystal. I could see it in his eyes … I thought he deserved another chance. Everyone does.”

  Cam didn’t say a word and neither did Riley, at first. And then she said, “Sometimes, they don’t take the opportunity, no matter how good it is.”

  “That’s why I’m not giving him another chance,” Dylan said firmly. These days, he had everything to lose, had never before understood more than he did right now why spies hid their families.

  With his brothers—both by blood and choice—Riley and the other women circling his orbit, he realized how vulnerable they all were.

  He had to find a way to protect them.

  “He’s formidable and deadly,” Dylan confirmed. “I have to be more so.”

  “You can’t take this on by yourself.”

  “I brought it on by myself—I have to be the one to end it,” Dylan told her. “Besides, he’s not going to stop until he has me—he just plans on going through all of you first.”