by Maddie Wade
“She needs a hospital, now.” Smithy lifted her body into his arms as Zin made a call to someone. They passed the shocked faces of Rykov’s men as Smithy placed her in the back of the car, causing a moan to escape her.
“Rykov will meet us at the corner. He has a doctor standing by to help her.”
Smithy wanted to argue that a hospital was best for her but knew it would be useless. Things worked differently here, and Zin knew it better than anyone.
Pulling up behind Rykov, he saw the other man run towards them.
Rykov swore when he saw Nazareli and gently lifted her into his arms. “Follow me.”
Smithy didn’t argue, just put the car in gear and followed him into a vast estate on the outskirts of St Petersburg. He had no time to admire the architecture, he selfishly needed Nazareli to live so he could find out what information she had that had almost gotten her killed.
Rykov carried Nazareli into a bedroom where a man with a doctor’s bag was waiting, drips with blood and fluid were already set up waiting for her.
“He will take care of her, please wait in the parlour and I’ll update you as soon as we know anything.”
“I need the location of Rhea Winslow. Ask her.”
“I’ll ask her as soon as she is stable and not before.”
Smithy saw the cold calculation in the man’s eyes, but he wasn’t afraid because if they didn’t get what they needed, millions would die, and that was even more terrifying. “Ask her.”
Smithy was pulled away by Zin, who for once was the calm one of the two of them. “Calm the fuck down before you get us both killed. His hospitality will only go so far.”
Smithy shrugged off the hand Zin had placed on him and instead called Zack, who was understandably angry, but Will soon found the footage which showed what had happened.
“She met with John in a train station and handed him something, but as she was walking back, an unknown assailant shoved her. It looks like that was when she was stabbed. She made it back to her room, probably thinking she could call someone, but the blood loss got to her first.”
“Can you track John?”
“Will’s on it now, but John has had years of practice avoiding being seen, so it won’t be easy.”
“Just let me know.” He hung up, resisting the urge to hurl the phone at the wall. They were so close, and yet it felt as if they were always on the back foot chasing a ghost.
A few hours later, Rykov emerged from the room where Nazareli had been taken, his shirt covered in her blood. Smithy and Zin jumped to their feet as he held up a hand. “She’s resting, but I did ask, and she said Sabetta. That’s where this woman is going.”
“Sabetta?”
“Yes, it’s a port thirty minutes from here. There is an oil rig not far offshore.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Go take care of this. I’ll see the man who did this is taken care of.”
Smithy had no idea how he knew who’d stabbed Nazareli or why, but he had no time to wonder.
Calling Zack again, he filled him in as he headed back to their base to gear up. It was time to go hunting.
An hour later he had on his Osprey body armour, bulletproof trousers, a shirt, and as many weapons as he could safely wear on his body. They’d agreed, albeit after a heated discussion, that Zin would stay at the port with Will which was as close as he needed to be to hack the mainframe on the computer Rhea would be carrying. Zack would drop Smithy off on the rig then cover his back.
Smithy didn’t like it, but Zack was the boss, and the only person that told him no was his wife.
At the port, Zin secured them a boat and set Will up in a disused warehouse. He quickly found footage of Rhea entering the port thirty minutes earlier and boarding a speedboat with two large suitcases—one he presumed had the drug, the other the computer. She had five guards with her.
Zin pointed at the screen as they watched John Smith board a fisherman’s skiff ten minutes later. “Look.”
“Looks like Nazareli gave him the location.”
“Once we take out the five guards, you head back to the boat and wait. As soon as Rhea is dead, I’ll bring the cases on board, and we get the hell out of there.”
“I don’t like the idea of leaving one of my men alone to face her.”
“Don’t doubt I’ll kill her, Zack. I have no intention of letting her live, and I need the boat ready in case she has a fail-safe on the rig.”
“You think she’d risk her life and blow it?” Zin’s accent had thickened in the short time they’d been there.
“Yes, I do, which is why I need an exfil ready.”
“Fine,” Zack bit out.
As he and Zack boarded the boat to head out to the oil well off the Sabetta Coast, his mind turned to home and the people he loved.
“Have we heard from Jack and Roz?” Smithy needed to go into this knowing Liz was safe.
“Yes, they have control of the Norwegian Rigs, and Roz has all our families safe.”
“Guess it’s time to end this then.”
Chapter 24
The sea was choppy as Zack manoeuvred the small speedboat up to the base of the rig. It wasn’t as big as other rigs Smithy had been on, but it was still pretty impressive. Once they were close enough, he jumped onto the platform, Zack a step behind him. In the SAS they’d done plenty of warfare simulations on oil rigs, but then he’d had more than one man backing him up, although Zack was better than most units.
Both men were dressed in black, with Osprey body armour underneath. Their thermal caps pulled low, helmets over the top, they were doing everything they could to make sure they went home to those they loved.
Smithy held up his fingers, and Zack nodded as they ran silently towards the first platform, clearing the two guards soundlessly with double taps. Smithy picked up the dead man’s radio and tapped Zack on the shoulder as he took the lead.
As they reached the second level, they could hear voices from the other side of the diesel generator. Zack motioned for him to go around and he poked his head out as the radio crackled. The soldier spun, and Smithy took him out with a headshot, his body was flipping backwards over the railing and landing on the gantry below.
“Guess they know we’re here now,” Zack said sardonically as he took out the last soldier on our level.
Smithy nodded above him knowing Rhea would be on the highest level where the engine room was located.
“Good luck, brother.” Zack didn’t hang around, knowing a clean exfil was crucial.
Once out of sight, Smithy turned and crept up the metal steps that ran along the crane and derrick. Reaching the third floor he felt the air behind him and spun as an assailant in black dove at him. Smithy took the blow falling through the gap of the door to the watch deck. Shoving his feet into the man’s belly he rolled backwards, throwing him behind him and jumping to his feet. The man circled him as Smithy followed his every move with a counter strike until his opponent began to lose his cool. Smithy was done with this game, and when he moved in again, he blocked, grabbed his arm, pivoted, and threw him to the ground as he screamed, his shoulder popping out of the joint.
Using his legs, he choked the guy out and zip tied him to the metal structure, picked up his gun which he’d dropped during the fight, and moved towards the engine room. He knew his silent entrance was blown but hoped the noise of the machinery would have masked most of it.
He saw Rhea Winslow with her back to the door, as put together and refined as always. The petite woman was not what anyone would expect a criminal mastermind to look like. Blonde hair perfectly done, she wore a pale green trouser suit, cream wool coat, and ridiculous four-inch heels.
He opened the door quietly, but she sensed it and spun, the gun in her hand pointing at him, but it was the smile on her face that made nausea roll in his gut. This woman would always be the bogeyman under the bed for him, the nightmare that would haunt him on weak days, when the silence filled him.
“I
knew you would come.”
She looked excited, almost happy to see him, and it freaked him the fuck out. Seeing the case with the laptop open on the console next to her, Smithy froze.
She followed his gaze. “We could be unstoppable. You could command an army that would rule the world.”
It was hard to see how this woman had gone from an innocent to so unhinged. Nobody was born this way, he truly believed that, and despite the things she’d done, he felt the smidgen of sympathy for the girl she’d been.
“I’m over this shit, Rhea. Give me the drug and the laptop.”
Her mouth formed a pouty mew that he’d seen her use before to get her way, but he was immune to her tricks. “Why would you not want to live in a world where only the gifted reside?”
“Because imperfection is the beauty.” His words seemed to confuse her for a second, so he pushed on. “Not all gifts are a blessing, Rhea, you know that. Or why would you poison yourself daily to suppress your own gift?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know my father loved you more than he ever loved me, enough to make him turn his back on his flesh and blood. Do you know how lucky you were to find a love like that?”
“He cheated on me.”
“He stole a baby for you. He walked away from me without a backwards glance.”
“He left me.”
Her voice shook with anger and pain, and he knew she loved John, but her gift, losing her child, and his cheating had broken her mind until she became this caricature of herself.
“You didn’t lose me, Jo.”
Smithy spun to see John step out of the control room, a gun in his hand. Smithy glanced at Rhea Winslow, and she’d gone sheet white, the weapon in her hand shaking so bad it was visible from where he stood.
“John?”
“Hello, Jo.” His voice was soft, almost indulgent as he said those two words.
Smithy watched, his gun on Rhea as his eyes moved between the two of them.
“You died.”
John moved closer, slowly as if he were approaching a wounded animal. “No, Jo, I had to go. Things were getting crazy, and you wouldn’t listen.”
Rhea cocked her head, her brow furrowing. “But this was our plan.”
“No, we planned to take the greatest of the gifted and enhance them, so we’d end up with an army of elite humans.”
Smithy felt the chuckle bubble up his throat. “You wanted to create real-life Avengers and ended up with fucking Thanos.” His laughter at the crazy fucked up situation these two had created was beyond the realms of reality.
“You laugh, son, but this world has threats nobody knows about, and we’re not equipped to deal with them.”
“Don’t fucking son me. I’m not your son. I’m not your anything. We have enough threats we do know about, and the biggest of them all is the woman you married and broke like a cheap toy. Now give me the fucking case.” He was finished with this conversation, with this crazy bullshit; he just wanted to go home.
“You’re right, I did mess up, I hurt Jo, I abandoned you and your mother, and I have so much blood on my hands, I can’t seem to clean it off.”
Rhea moved slowly towards the case at her feet.
“Don’t move.” Smithy pointed the gun at her head.
“Why didn’t you ask me to stop, John? I’d have left it all for you.”
“No, baby, you wouldn’t have. You had Meg, and even that sweet girl didn’t heal the broken part of your heart where our daughter lived.”
“She didn’t look like you. Meg wasn’t Clara, she could never be. I carried Clara in my body, nurtured her, and she died, John.”
Tears were pouring from her eyes as John moved closer to her, pain in his own eyes that tore at Smithy. Grief evident at the loss of a child, a sister he’d never know.
“I know, baby. I missed her too, I still do every day.”
“You left me,” she accused again.
John moved again, and in a blink, he had Rhea cuffed to the railing on the console behind her.
She looked up in shock and outrage. “No,” she screamed as she shook the cuff wildly.
“You won’t ever stop, Jo. It’s a sickness inside you.”
“You did this.”
“I know, and I’m so damn sorry. I love you, Jo, I always have. Just give Smithy the cases, and let’s end this.”
Smithy saw her look of panic as he moved closer. “It’s too late.” She pointed to a timer which was wired to the underside of the console. “The well is rigged to explode.”
John looked at him a pained expression on his face as he moved to Rhea and held her close to his body, and she leaned into him, suddenly small and frightened. “Take the cases and leave.”
“Tell me where the bomb is, and I can disarm it.”
John shook his head. “No, this ends now.”
Smithy had no clue if he was reading this right. “I can save you.” He’d never see John as a father to him because he hadn’t been one, but he’d been a mentor, and while it ended badly, in the beginning they’d been almost friends.
“You already did. You showed me what it was to be strong. I saw your struggle. I saw what you went through and nothing broke you. I was never a good man, and I was a useless father, so let me do this now. Let me set you free.”
Smithy looked at the timer and knew he was out of time. With one more look at his father and the woman who’d almost broken him as they slid to the ground, John’s arms around her as he gazed at Rhea with absolute adoration and love, he turned and left. Leaving them to die in each other’s arms seemed fitting somehow.
With two minutes on the clock, he ran as fast as he could to the boat, both cases in his hand, he passed the place where the soldier had been cuffed and saw the empty space and breathed a sigh of relief. That was one more death he wouldn’t have on his conscience. As he approached where Zack was waiting and saw he was alone, Smithy had no idea how the man had gotten away, nor did he care in that moment. All that mattered was him and Zack getting safety away before the rig blew.
Zack looked at him as he jumped into the boat. “It done?”
“Yeah, let’s go. This place is about to blow.”
Zack gunned the speedboat as fast as it would go, putting as much distance between them as he could. They were almost to shore when the explosion came, knocking them clear out of the boat and into the icy Siberian waters.
Smithy felt his breathing hitch at the shock of the cold, his ears ringing as pain struck him, and he began to sink, the air in his lungs burning as he fought not to take in a lungful of ice water. He fought the sluggish pull of his body, the murk of the sea full of silt and debris, as his world went blank.
Hands reached for him and blessed air sucked into his lungs as he coughed up the water he’d swallowed. Zin was standing over him and helped him the last few feet to dock where Zack and Will hauled him up.
Smithy looked around wildly. “The cases?”
“I have them,” Zack reassured him, holding up the two wet cases.
“How the fuck did you hold onto them?”
Zack shrugged. “Not letting this go south now.”
Smithy looked back at the devastation behind him, the burning oil well pushing out a massive amount of heat and smoke.
“Well, she and John won’t have survived that.”
“John was there?” Zack frowned.
“Yeah, he appeared from nowhere, shocked the hell out of her, but then she seemed to break down and became this scared, broken woman.”
“Well, as long as it’s over, I don’t care.”
Zack handed the one case to Will. “Shut down those implants, and let’s get the fuck out of Russia before they catch us.”
Will spent ten minutes on the laptop before he broke the encryption and shut down the implants. He hit the last button with a flourish and grinned. “Done. They’ll need the implants removed but there should be no more zombie soldiers.”
S
mithy threw him a look, and the tatted tech nerd went still.
Smithy grinned. “I’m just fucking with you, let’s go home.”
Chapter 25
As the plane touched down, Lizzie was already out of the car waiting on the tarmac. When they’d gotten word that it was all over, she’d expected a huge rush of relief. It hadn’t come and she’d thought perhaps it was just that she was overwrought after the tension of the last few days.
She glanced at Bebe and Astrid who’d brought her to the airfield to meet Smithy. Celeste was with her, but Ava had stayed home with the kids and Aubrey had been called into work. It seemed crime didn’t stop for anything.
The last forty-eight hours had been the longest of her life. Her certainty that she was going to lose him wrapping her in the kind of grief she never wanted to feel again. Her eyes didn’t leave the door to the aircraft, and as the doors opened and she saw him standing at the top, her feet began to move, until she was running towards him. He jogged down the steps, a broad, beautiful stunning grin on his handsome face and she jumped into his arms knowing he’d always catch her.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck, her head buried in his throat, and he held on so tight she knew he felt everything she was feeling. Her heart thudded against her chest in tandem with his. Her hands stroked his hair, his body, trying to reassure herself that he was okay.
“Is it over? Is she dead?”
His eyes went soft at her words, and he nodded. “She’s dead, baby. It’s over.” He leaned in and kissed her. It wasn’t soft but demanding and wild as they poured out the fear they’d harboured inside them. Her surroundings fell away, and it was only the two of them as her hands tightened in his hair, his hands on her ass holding her to him, the hard planes of his body firm to her wandering hands.
When they were almost breathless, he pulled away, his eyes hooded with desire and need. The heat pumping between them, stoking the fire of their passion until a cough brought them out of the bubble they were in, and Ty chuckled.