The lock clicked back, and Kat opened her door and stepped out into the entry, the space between the metal door and the inner door to her apartment. She held a big skeleton key.
“Privyet,” Kat said. She wore a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans.
He’d met her a couple years ago at the embassy a few months before Tasha was killed.
Murdered. That part was important to remember, even if no one else knew it.
He’d used her skills a few times over the years. A black hat hacker, the petite redhead knew her way around the dark web. She could get at the source of who might be intercepting RJ’s emails. And she could get a message out to his contact, the one person who might be able to smuggle a wanted-by-Interpol suspected assassin out of the country.
As the bolt slid back and she opened the door, she startled at the sight of his companion, almost hiding behind him.
“Hey, Kat. I hope you don’t mind. I had to bring her with me. We need your help. She’s wanted—she’s all over the news—”
“I know,” Kat said, her eyes widening. “And I’ve been so worried.” She stepped over the threshold, her arms out. “What are you doing here?”
Only then did he realize she wasn’t talking to him, wasn’t reaching for him, but for RJ, who had come out from behind him.
The only warning he got was in RJ’s caught breath, a tiny noise of near pain, and then, “Coco?”
He stepped back as Kat grabbed RJ around the neck. “Rubes. Are you kidding me?”
He wanted to shush them.
But Kat did it for him. She leaned back, catching RJ’s face in her hands, and whispered, “What have you gotten yourself into?”
No. The bigger question was…what had he gotten himself into?
4
Even to himself, the plan sounded out of control.
And Ford spent most of his life doing over-the-top. Most of his life facing impossible odds, doing what others said couldn’t be done.
Like jumping out of a helicopter miles from land in the middle of the Arabian Sea with a Zodiac raft in a box. Inflating the Zodiac, attaching a motor, and infiltrating Yemen waters to a secure location. Deflating the raft, donning fins and a rebreather to affix it to the ocean floor.
Like swimming to shore underwater, creeping onto land, hiding the gear, changing into tactical armor, and stealing inland for miles to overlook a renegade camp.
They’d eliminated two known terrorist targets wanted for the murders of hundreds of innocents. Taken their pictures.
Sneaked back out of the country, redonned the scuba gear, swam to the bottom of the ocean, and reinflated the raft.
And finally, motored out to the extraction point.
All in ten hours.
At night.
So yeah, Ford felt pretty sure he could travel to Russia, whose militia wasn’t shooting people at their border, as far as he knew, track down his sister—yeah, that might be a challenge, but he had a few leads, thanks to Senator White—and get her out of said country.
Okay, that last part had him a little befuddled. He could use backup. A teammate.
But his preferred teammate hadn’t exactly answered her phone when he’d called, twice, from the airport in Helena.
He was taking quite the leap here.
Yeah, this could be a very bad idea.
But he’d been doing a lot of leaping since Hardwin’s phone conversation yesterday morning. He’d put the senator on speaker when White called back less than an hour after Hardwin’s request.
“Here’s what I could find out,” he said. “And if you tell anyone where you got this—”
“This conversation never happened,” Hardwin said, looking directly at Ford.
He still didn’t like the guy, but Ford had to admit, he did a good job of comforting his mother.
All the same, it put him off to see another man holding his mother, replacing his father’s embrace. He’d had to avert his eyes as White talked.
“According to her boss, Sophia Randall, Ruby Jane Marshall left a cryptic message on her phone a week ago saying that she got a tip from one of Randall’s European contacts. He said he’d picked up chatter about an assassination attempt on General Boris Stanislov. Randall was out of the country herself, away from her phone, and didn’t get the message until she landed back in her office four days later. By that time, the shooting had already happened, and Randall was trying to sort it out. She says that she’s been in contact with the bureau chief in Moscow, and he’s trying to find Ruby Jane. They’ve also put out feelers to agents in the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas, and they’ll let me know if she turns up.”
Silence around the table. Ford hung his head in his hands.
“And now I’m going to give you a name, Hardwin. It’s a guy I served with—he was a young buck when I was leaving the SEALs, but he did ten years in that area of the world, and he has the contacts to equip you with what you need to get in and out of the country. He’s no longer active duty, but he runs an international SAR team out of Minneapolis called Jones, Inc. I’ll text you his number. Ask for Hamilton Jones, and you can tell him I sent you.”
The look Kelsey gave Knox had Ford’s radar beeping, and after White hung up, Kelsey filled him in.
Jones was her half brother, a former SEAL with Team Three, and right then, Ford okay-ed the op. He’d heard of Jones and his legendary mission that got him expelled from the teams. Made the guy a bit of a hero in Ford’s book.
The family had waged a short argument as Hardwin tracked down Jones about who, if any of them, might go to Russia with Jones.
Ford didn’t care whose feelings got hurt. “No way am I bringing Knox or Reuben in with me. Sorry, guys, but you don’t know the first thing about covert ops.”
He ignored their ire and turned to Tate. “You. I’d go with you.”
Tate swallowed, glanced at Glo.
“You should go,” she said and slipped her hand into his.
“Whoever was trying to kill Senator Jackson is still out there,” Tate said and looked up at Ford. “I’ll go, but only as a last resort.”
Fair enough. Because even as Tate said it, Ford saw the torment in his eyes.
Family versus the woman he loved.
Ford didn’t want to make him choose.
But Hamilton Jones had a different idea. The former SEAL went right to the point when Ford explained their situation. “I’ll go, but you need backup. It sounds easy, sure—track your sister down, get her a new passport, hustle her out of the country. I’d send my guys in, but I have my own reasons to talk to this contact personally. We might need someone for logistics, someone who can watch our backs, connect us with help if we need it. Can you round up someone?”
And that settled it. Because Tate wasn’t going to fly across the ocean to sit by the phone. Not when Glo might be in danger.
But Ford knew someone who would.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
Please.
Which was why Ford had Knox fly him to the Helena airport that night. Why he hopped a plane at the crack of dawn for San Diego, took an Uber to his apartment, picked up the keys to his bike, grabbed a second helmet, and took off for Logan Heights.
Scarlett owned a small but cute 1968 pink stucco house on a tiny square of grass that she’d purchased for a deal and remodeled herself, including installing the fancy tile, painting the cupboards, and even updating the bathroom.
He liked her place. Reminded him of Scarlett. Down to earth, a hard worker, unflappable on the inside.
Pink on the outside.
Truth was, she could have lived in a high-rise condo and he would have liked it, as long as she was there.
She wasn’t home.
He stood on the stoop and pressed the bell much longer than social customs should allow. Then did it again just in case she might still be sleeping at the late hour of 10 hundred.
No answer.
Her car was gone from the drive. Which meant she hadn�
��t biked the 2.3 miles to the San Diego base but was using the car to go farther.
Like her favorite stretch of beach in Coronado, where they trained together before she took her PRT to qualify to be a Rescue Swimmer.
Ford got on his bike, and the cool breezes off the ocean scraped the sweat from his skin.
He loved San Diego. The towering palm trees, the briny scent of the ocean, and the tang of suntan oil. The seagulls that cried overhead. The feel of the surf on his skin, cool and bracing.
He’d become a man here. At eighteen, he’d shown up for BUD/S, scared out of his mind that he’d fail, that he’d end up swabbing decks on some obscure ship.
That he’d never be the man he envisioned for himself.
He’d nearly drowned twice. Once during the combat swim.
Once later during the drownproofing test, when they bound his hands and feet. He’d lost so much body fat by then he sank to the bottom, had to fight his way to the surface for a slip of air.
The strategy was to teach the recruits how to live without oxygen. Deprived, yet fully functional. To tamp down the natural panic that rose as their air slipped away, stay calm and give everything they had to succeed, even if it cost them, well, everything.
He’d had to sacrifice his very breath for the thing he wanted most.
Ford had woken on the deck, gasping for air, when his master chief instructor sent his knuckles into his sternum.
But he’d lived. Refused to ring the bell that week and every week thereafter until they put a trident on his chest.
Of course by then, he’d run out of time to return home and show off the Budweiser to the old man.
Ford pulled up to the boardwalk, parked, and secured his helmet in the seat box. He hung his keys around his neck on the lanyard he used when swimming. The beach was already full, sunbathers lying out on rented loungers, children digging in the surf, the sand covered with towels, umbrellas, and coolers.
He wound his way out to the surf, standing in the sinking sand as the water lapped at his feet. Putting his hand over his eyes, he shielded them and stared out into the horizon. She liked to cross between the buoys, about two hundred yards out.
No swimmers that far out.
His hopes fell a little, but he shouldn’t have expected to find her. She’d probably left for Rescue Swimmer training. Still, he’d texted Sonny from Montana, and he said he’d seen her just a few days ago, so he was taking the wild chance she was still around.
“Ford?”
His heart nearly stopped. He turned, and yes. Yes.
His words clogged in his throat because Scarlett stood right there wearing a body-hugging swim skin, her short brown hair tousled, red highlights glistening in the sunlight, her beautiful brown eyes big as she stared at him, as shocked as he was, maybe, to see him.
“I thought you were gone,” he said stupidly.
No—no, that’s not what—
“I had a family emergency,” she said softly. “Sorry. I should have called you right away, but—”
“No need. I got spun up right after the rally. When I got back, I saw that you called—I should have called you back.”
Yes, he should have. He saw it in her eyes, the flicker of hurt.
Then, just like that, it vanished. She lifted a shoulder as if hearing from him or not was no big deal.
With the gesture, something just sort of died inside him.
Just teammates.
She’d made that clear, and he planned on respecting it.
He had one job, one goal, and that was to get his sister back.
But he needed help doing it. So, the best thing to do was come right out and… “Scarlett, I…I need you.”
She blinked at him, her mouth opening slightly, and he didn’t stop. “My sister is…okay, it’s a very long story, but she’s disappeared in Russia, and I’m going to find her.”
She closed her mouth. Swallowed. Then, “What…why do you…need me?”
“I’m going in-country with a former SEAL who runs SAR ops for situations sort of like this, but we need backup, someone who can stay behind, but close enough for support if we need it.”
“The voice on the radio,” she said softly.
He lifted a shoulder, nodded, and added a smile. “One more go before you head to Rescue Swimmer school?” Then he frowned. “Wait—I sort of assumed you were on transfer leave. This won’t make you AWOL, will it?”
“No.” She looked past him toward the ocean, then back, and her smile seemed forced. “It’ll be fine. I have a long time left on my leave.”
“This shouldn’t take more than a few days, tops. Senator White is trying to track her down—”
“You got the presidential candidate to help you?”
He started walking with her toward the boardwalk. “Yeah. Apparently, he’s a fly-fishing buddy of my mother’s, uh…boyfriend.”
Scarlett stopped and raised an eyebrow, and—
“Right? Hello, thank you very much. Someone who finally understands. Yes, my mother’s boyfriend. Just saying that weirds me out.”
Scarlett laughed, and the sound of it hit his bones like a balm—cool, refreshing, sweet.
Wow, he’d missed her.
“You’re going to live through this, Marsh.”
He liked it when she called him by his nickname. “I dunno. It feels like there’s a live grenade in the room and no one wants to acknowledge it.”
“Oh, please. It can’t be that bad. Besides, your mom is smart. She’s not going to get into a relationship with someone your family doesn’t like.”
“Yeah, I guess. It just feels weird. My parents were married nearly thirty years.”
“She’s still pretty young. She has another thirty in her.”
“You’re making it worse.”
Again the laughter, and he wanted to grab it out of the air and tuck it inside, never let it go.
They stopped at the boardwalk and she eyed his bike.
“I brought an extra helmet…”
“I have my car.”
Yeah. Probably for the best.
He well remembered the feel of her arms around his waist, her body tight against his.
Teammates!
“I’ll follow you home.”
She nodded and held on to the towel ends around her neck. She unzipped her wet suit, and a key dangled from her own lanyard. “Ford, I should probably tell you—”
Suddenly he was right back to over a week ago, about to land on her doorstep and make a fool out of himself. Tell her that he needed her, not only in his ear, watching his back, but in his life.
Except, that wasn’t fair. Not to her, and not to him. She had a future as a Rescue Swimmer, months of training, then deployment to who knew where, and any kind of relationship would be complicated.
She was worth complicated.
But it wasn’t fair to her. Not when she needed her complete focus on passing. On staying alive.
He would sacrifice his very breath to give her what she wanted most.
So, “No, Red,” he said, interrupting her. “Don’t…”
Because maybe he was making a leap here, but he thought he saw the same dangerous impulse in her pretty eyes to dive back into the almosts and maybes between them.
Her mouth closed. She nodded.
Looked away, back to the ocean, the scrape of the waves upon the shore. “When do we leave?”
“We’re meeting Ham and my sister’s contact, a guy named Roy, in Prague in twenty-four hours. There’s a flight leaving in three.”
“Pick me up at my house in an hour.”
“Thanks, Red.”
She held up her hand in a fist bump. “Let’s go get your sister.”
The voices in the kitchen woke her, and for a moment, RJ simply stared at the room, trying to place her surroundings.
High ceilings, birds chirruping outside an open window bracketed by lace curtains, straining the light into intricate patterns on the wood floor that was carpeted with a b
lue Turkish rug. A small wooden table was shoved into the corner, a short bookshelf held a smattering of paperbacks, and an overstuffed red chair propped a book on its arm—The Hunger Games, in English—lying open and facedown.
RJ was curled onto a long sofa bed, pulled out to accommodate two, and as she raised her head, she realized she’d been drooling, having hit the pillow hard and completely crashing only a few hours ago.
To her knowledge, York hadn’t slept at all, and probably not Coco, who would have climbed in beside her—
Coco.
Oh my. She’d found Coco. Not that her foster sister had been hiding, really, but after the fiasco with Wyatt, she’d sort of washed her hands of the family.
Thanks for that, bro.
But she’d been here, in Moscow, all that time.
They’d barely caught up last night, York the Driven needing Coco to start hunting down the ISP and source of whoever had intercepted RJ’s emails.
He hadn’t been pleased that Coco and RJ knew each other. If possible, he’d turned even crabbier, as if RJ had somehow stolen his thunder.
Although, maybe the darkness crashed right after she’d kissed him.
Yeah, she’d kissed him. More of an impulsive, panicked move, but she’d found herself maybe trying a little too hard to make it real.
He tasted good. And had soft lips and a mouth that, yeah, at first didn’t respond, but then…
Then.
He’d wrapped his arms around her, clearly seeing the need to put a little believability into the kiss. Never mind that it was for show. After nearly a week on the run, ragged-edged and buzzing inside, kissing him made the world slow down. For a brief, comforting moment, York was holding her, and she didn’t even care that he didn’t really like her. He was safe. Strong. Capable.
She had let herself relax.
Let herself kiss him.
It wasn’t attached to feelings—more of a release of her tension, and maybe for him, too, because although she didn’t mean to urge him on, he deepened their kiss, turning it from exploratory to need. Became an unexpected bond between them that pushed aside the questions and suspicions and nourished something she hadn’t realized she needed.
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