“Don’t think you know her like that.” What was wrong with his heart? Its rhythm jumped and plummeted. “She has a handler who has a death grip on her neck. She’s trying to get free of him. That is her priority.”
“Not if she thinks you might get hurt.”
Griffin whirled on the assassin. Why was it so hard to breathe?
“Whoa!” Max jumped in front of Griffin. “Step off, Legend.”
“You don’t know nothin’, assassin.”
“I know she’s missed several opportunities to bug out already.” Aladdin shook his head. “I sat there wondering why she hadn’t. Had she been sent or planted? But that didn’t add up, and she wasn’t sending information back. Then what was keeping her with us?” Aladdin’s blue-green eyes seemed to sparkle. “It’s you, Legend. She watches you, gauges your moves, waits for you to execute.”
“You’re out of your fool mind.”
“What happened on the rooftop the other night?”
The Kid hooted at the same time Max repeated his warning for Griffin to stand down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Griffin turned away, spotted a tray of food, and grabbed a plate.
“Legend.”
No way he’d turn around and let them see his red face.
“What just happened?” Max asked.
The Kid laughed. “Yeah, explain why your fist isn’t embedded in Aladdin’s face right now.”
“Why isn’t she with Sydney and the others?” Max asked.
“I told you,” Griffin said, turning around. “She was going to run back to Carrick. I had to make sure she couldn’t.”
“So,” Aladdin said. “You thought being here with us, a team of six men focused on saving villagers and stopping a crazed senator, would be better and provide more security than seven Mossad agents whose only focus is protecting the women and children?”
Why did it sound so stupid and unreasonable now? He’d been determined not to let her out of his sight.
Light shifted and flickered. Griffin glanced back as Squirt and five men trudged into the tent, dripping with sweat and exhaustion. They smelled of hot sand and body odor.
Max hurried to the Aussies. “Report.” Nightshade vacated the chairs, allowing the exhausted men to sit, and grabbed water bottles for them.
“Just like Callaghan said. The mine’s there. They’re exporting the ore on trucks to an airport, best we can tell. The senator’s there with his entourage. They’re staying in the nearby city but spending a lot of time at the mine.” Squirt pulled off his hat, his dark blond hair damp. “We were about to pull out when a chopper arrived.”
“Military?”
“Negative. Private.” He downed a bottle of water in a breath. “A Brit.” He held out a handheld device.
Max glanced at it, then passed it to Cowboy.
“That’s him—that’s the man who held us in London.”
“What you’ve done, Legend,” Max said, “is put her within arm’s reach of that man.”
As if invisible hands pushed him down, Griffin fell into a chair. What had he done? Tried to control things, tried to save face, not show his hands or his heart. Control his temper. Control his feelings. Control information about his past.
And in doing so, he may have lost the one woman he’d ever loved.
Loved.
Head in his hands, he propped his elbows on his knees.
“Aladdin, Kid,” Max said, “find her. Bring her in.”
“Legend, talk to me,” Cowboy said from beside him. “To the team.”
Stretching his hands, he tried to work through the tension, the building anger. “All my life…” The torrent rose, threatening to overcome him. “I’ve worked—hard—to be in control of myself, know what I’m sayin’? To protect my name, my honor. In the last six months, everything has been ripped from me, but I just shoved aside the feelings, the anger, the emptiness.” She was right—she’d asked if he was ignoring it. “I can’t lose her. She gets up under my skin something bad, but I need her. I won’t let anything happen. Won’t let that man hurt her again. Aladdin figured out she was going to run, so I wanted her where I could keep an eye on her.”
There was an entire cesspool of ignored feelings, hurts, broken dreams. What would the team think of him when they found out the things he had hidden for months, years, decades?
Flap!
“She’s gone!” The Kid panted, gripping his knees.
Griffin shoved to his feet.
Aladdin gulped. “The only working vehicle is gone, too.”
CHAPTER 35
If it looks like a potato, smells like a potato…
“Then it is a potato,” Marshall muttered as he stared down at the lumpy breakfast prepared for the team as they waited for supplies and the go-ahead from the Old Man. But the potato saying from his grandmother wasn’t about the foodstuff.
“Eh? What’s that?”
Marshall looked up at Squirt, who sat across the table with him and the others, waiting for Max to get final go-ahead and the supply drop the Old Man had ordered, which would come via a parachute drop from a DC10. “Nothing.” He scratched the side of his face. “It doesn’t add up.” “What?”
“The day of the attack…” Marshall looked at Cowboy. “That was the 5th of January, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“My dad was in Paris meeting with the French foreign minister.”
“I repeat, so?”
“Just…” Marshall shrugged. Why did he want to believe his father was innocent? The man had screwed with his head, drugged him. Those were facts he couldn’t deny. It just seemed over the top for his father. He’d never been so direct, so “in your face.” “Why would he keep those pictures?”
“Collateral,” Squirt said.
“Blackmail.” Cowboy moved to the food station and set down his cup.
“Against who?” Marshall hated the way his voice cracked as if he were just now going through puberty.
Cowboy shrugged. “Whoever he hired to carry out the hit.”
Okay, he’d give them that one, even though it just seemed too…stupid for his father. The man had tracked down the team. He’d organized multimillion-dollar charities. Served on too many boards.
Cowboy eased onto the bench and leaned in. “Marshall, you having seconds thoughts about going after your dad?”
“No.” But what if something went wrong? Or what if they were wrong?
“That’s a really long answer for a two-letter word.”
“Huh?”
“Your hesitation afterward says you aren’t sure.”
“I’m going crazy with the what-ifs, ya know?”
“He drugged you and held you at your home, concealed your location, and now he’s at the mine,” Cowboy said. “Aussies confirmed that. Those are facts. Your own research showed he’s neck-deep in activities in this area.”
“Yeah.”
“And we aren’t going in to kill him.” Kind, compassionate eyes held his. “That’s not the plan.”
“Not ours.” Marshall skated a peek in Navas’s direction. “But we aren’t the only ones with a beef against him.”
“Even though we’re taking him down, we’ll also protect him to make sure justice is served,” Cowboy said, assurance thick and deep in his voice.
“Well…who’s this Carrick guy? What do we know? I mean, he’s there, with my dad. Why? What does he want? That’s some coincidence that he is connected to the girl and shows up with my dad, right? Don’t you think?”
“No coincidence,” Cowboy said. “I think he figured out there was something big happening with Griffin and me, so he hunted down the cash flow and illegal activity like a bloodhound. And he’s not someone we can control. He’s more a nuisance. It’s your dad we’re after.”
Marshall scrubbed his fingers over his hair. “I know.” He pulled himself closer to the makeshift table. “Dude, I don’t know why I’m second-guessing. He’s made my whole life miserable. He
attacked the team.”
“Speculation.”
“Half spec—the drugging me is fact, and I’m part of the team.”
Amusement twinkled in Cowboy’s eyes. “You done good work, Kid. Getting free, getting the women to Cyprus.” He nodded. “Well done.”
A feather could’ve knocked Marshall over as he stared at the big guy he’d admired since day one. “Yeah, but try telling that to Frogman.”
“Oh, he knows.” Cowboy puckered his chin. “He don’t miss a thing.”
Squirt backhanded his arm. “Oy.”
Marshall looked at him.
“What’s this I ‘ear about you calling my sister an angel?”
Were the tips of his ears red? Marshall could feel the heat creeping through his face. “The Old Man sent her in to play nurse to me.”
Squirt’s face darkened.
“Oh.” His blood chugged through his veins. “Not what I meant, dude. She has nursing skills. She could get me undrugged.” He groaned, knowing he was messing this up royally. He wanted Squirt’s approval for dating Narelle. “Dude, what can I say? I went out with her three or four times and really enjoyed getting to know her—on a nonphysical level. Then we had this incredible journey getting the wives back to the team. She was amazing. Narelle—“
“Narelle?” Squirt growled. “She let you call her that?”
Marshall hesitated.
Squirt cursed under his breath, then stabbed a finger at him. “You hurt her, and I’ll wrap your legs around your neck and beat the living daylights out of you.”
Marshall couldn’t help but laugh. “Dude.” He sniggered more. “Am I supposed to be scared?”
Punching to his feet, Squirt shouted. “I’ll show you—“
Max appeared in the door. “Supplies incoming! Let’s gear up!”
It’d been nearly seven long months since he’d been on a mission with the team. Now, aboard the chopper, heading to the mine where they had authorization to snatch and grab Warren Vaughn and seize anything that enabled the miners to harvest the yellowcake, Griffin stared out the open door of the chopper. Early morning light stretched across the desert landscape, touching the scattered dots of green with an almost ethereal glow as sunlight stroked them. Besides a sparse tree or a random bamboo and thatched-roof hut, brown bathed the landscape in anonymity.
It should feel good getting back into the action. Going after the bad guys. He’d thrived on this once. And while he moved seamlessly with the men aboard, something had changed in him.
Kazi.
Head against the hull of the chopper, Griffin closed his eyes. She’d left, run back to the man who held entirely too much power over her mind and heart. Griffin had longed to believe what Aladdin had said, that Kazi stuck around because of him. So much for that.
He hadn’t been able to save his mama. Now the same thing would happen to Kazi.
But wasn’t that just like her? She saw herself as impervious, able to slip in and out of situations without notice or getting caught. And she was right. She’d done it several times in the short time he knew her. She was like a mouse, scurrying from one hole to another. Man, she was good. He’d underestimated her in that regard. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.
“I just can’t do it, Griffin.”
Even now he could feel the soft tickle of those words against his ears. Domestic stuff intimidated her, frightened her. That’s what it was about. Probably not the type to settle down.
But she wanted to try. He remembered the way she stiffened like cardboard as Sydney tried to ingratiate her to the circle of Nightshade women. She’d looked at Griffin, as if gauging whether he was worth the effort. And he had to admit, it did his heart good to see her with them. To see a piece of the puzzle of his life coming together.
But it wasn’t. Kazi told him she couldn’t do it, couldn’t fit in.
But she wanted to.
More than anything, he wanted her to. How they’d make things work, he didn’t know. Couldn’t fathom. She was an operative. He was black ops. Always gone.
Maybe they could find a way. Like in the movies, rendezvous in exotic places around the globe. You reaching with that one, Riddell.
He swiped a hand over his face, his heart and thoughts tangled around an impossible woman. Regardless of what the future held—more like, didn’t hold—for them, one thing was surefire: He’d get her back from Carrick. Alive. Just so she had the freedom to choose the next path for her life.
And maybe he could figure out a way to find out if the man killed her family.
Why was it he realized too late what she meant to him? Didn’t make sense. She was white, spunky, and short. Didn’t fit his ideal woman at all. But everything about her was…perfect.
“…my brother sold me into prostitution to pay off the family debt.” Those words had haunted him. But when she spoke them, he’d been so hung up on his own problems, his own fear of her getting inside his head and seeing the ugly, that he hadn’t even heard her.
No wonder Baby Girl had trust issues. He’d kill that brother if he got close enough. Did that to Kazi, ripped her innocence from her for money.
Her brother, Carrick…even if they tried to make things work out between them, would she ever really trust him? Really give herself—her mind and heart—to him? Griffin understood keeping people out to protect the past. He’d done it himself. Hadn’t even told the team about his parents or Dante.
Things had to change. Couldn’t go on like this. But where did he start? Things were too insane right now.
“May you never be taller than you are when you’re on your knees.” Madyar’s favorite phrase spiraled through his thoughts. Right. Prayer.
Jesus, I’ve been blinded by my fears. Scared to let her in. Scared she’d think less of me. I want a chance…another chance to let her in. Love her and protect her. I believe You put that in me. Help me. Please.
The helo rose and dipped as they traced the landscape, staying under the radar to prevent those at the mine from getting a warning in time to either fire up some antiaircraft weaponry or, worse—escape.
And now she was back with the man he’d promised to protect her from.
But she willingly went back there. The thought stabbed him, his conscience, and made him second-guess everything.
God, I don’t know what to do with that. It was her choice.
Trust.
Griffin snorted and lifted his head from the hull. Trust. Right. She went back to the man. By all appearances, she’d gone back to betray the team.
His pulse slipped into a lower gear. What would the guys do if she betrayed them? If she was there, at the mine, with Carrick—she’d be deemed an enemy combatant.
He jerked forward, elbows on his knees. No, he would not let that happen.
But what if it came down to her or the team, the mission?
The thought paralyzed him. Aggravated him that he’d even hesitate over whom to be loyal to. Always—always his loyalty was to the mission and his boys. But now the thought of Kazi being at the business end of Frogman’s muzzle. Or in the crosshairs of Cowboy’s scope.
Betray the team?
No. He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Take her down?
He…Jesus, don’t let it come to that.
“ETA in two,” Max’s voice rang clearly through the coms, signaling the hour of reckoning.
“Remember, we need the senator alive,” Scott said.
“Everyone else is a combatant.” Max nodded. “Going silent.”
CHAPTER 36
Nkooye Green World Mine, Uganda
Senator Vaughn,” Carrick said as he shook the man’s hand. “I look forward to talking with you more in the future.”
Fit and trim with salt-and-pepper hair, Senator Vaughn offered a faint smile. “Of course.” He glanced between Carrick and the beauty of a woman beside him. Kazimiera. She’d shown up shortly before dawn in a dilapidated jalopy. “If you’ll excuse me…” Vaughn strode up the steps into the tr
ailer and opened the door.
The same stale air Carrick detested sailed out as the man entered.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Kazi said with gritted teeth.
He touched two fingers beneath her chin. “Speak clearly, love. Anger doesn’t become you.”
She slapped away his hand. “Don’t touch me.”
With the sun bathing her white-blond hair and an attractive sheen of sweat covering her face, she seemed to glow. “Now, love. Have you forgotten you came back to me?”
“You can’t handle these men, Carrick. I saw them—they eliminated every threat you sent.” Defiance glinted too prettily on her small features. “You saw how skilled two of them were—and they escaped from you. Now there are six or seven of them. And they’re coming.”
“Do you really think I’m not prepared?”
She drew back, her green eyes bouncing over his face.
He chuckled. “That’s right, love. I know about these men.” He pointed toward the trailer. “I made a few calls. If they try to come, they’ll be shot out of the sky.”
Her mouth opened. Not for some pithy remark like she was known for, but that subtle sign of fear.
Carrick memorized the moment. “It’s been a few years since I took you by surprise.” He traced her face.
She smacked his hand.
He gripped her wrist hard. Pinched her face and yanked her up to himself. “Did you really think a man like him would want you, the scraps from my table?” He squeezed harder. “You forget yourself, Kazimiera. I own you.”
Rage burned in those beautiful eyes. It could’ve been so different. If she’d let it.
“I will never let you go. And I will kill anyone who tries to take you from me. Especially the big black man you seem to have set your fancy on.” He exhaled, amazed at the strength in those words. “He’s distracting you. That needs to be remedied.” He shoved her back and started for his private chopper.
“He doesn’t care about me.”
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