Текст книги "Mine"

Автор книги: Dimon HelenKay

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FOUR

Andy MacIntosh sat at his brother Gabe’s desk, double-checking work emails and generally keeping Tosh running as promised while Gabe was away. Not that those were easy shoes to fill. Gabe might only be six years older, but he’d been an adult and responsible, stepping into family roles since Andy hit puberty.

That bone-deep dependability and solid work ethic only increased when Gabe opened Tosh four years ago. Instead of the usual floundering small company routine, Gabe’s contacts and reputation launched them into a stream of steady work. Most days, too much work.

They had three on-the-ground assignments rolling at the same time right now, all high priority and all involving life-or-death scenarios. Safe houses with complex security measures and big gun protection. Usually Andy headed up a team, but Gabe’s sudden willingness to hit the field one-on-one with Natalie grounded Andy this time. He got stuck behind with the paperwork, file preparing and directing the rest of the group as they guided operations from a distance. Andy knew the men depended on him for intel and surveillance, but that didn’t make the big desk job any more interesting.

With few employees left in the office and those all focused on specific tasks, things had been quiet. They didn’t get many guests. Few people knew the two-story nondescript warehouse in southwest Washington, D.C., housed an upscale, high-tech multimillion-dollar security company. No flash on the outside. No expensive cars in the parking lot.

The only hint something more than packing and unpacking of crates happened inside the beige building came from the state-of-the-art security system. The same one that flashed a visitor’s face a few minutes ago. Even now Andy waited in the chair for the unwanted showdown to start.

He heard a beep, and the screen of one of the many monitors outlining the desk snapped to life. One of his mapping experts—a guy with years of technical experience and a brain that left them all breathless—played escort in the hall. Andy hit the buzzer before anyone could knock. He had enough of a headache without adding to it, and this scene would likely do just that.

The door opened, and Andy waved away his employee while Rick stepped inside. Rather than wait for the boring hellos to begin, Andy jumped right in. “Since you’re here, I assume you know Gabe is out of town.”

“Good to see you, too. Interesting you still choose to have your security act as a lockdown to keep you trapped inside.” Rick walked straight in and took the chair on the other side of the desk. “I warned Gabe about that flaw when he set up this place.”

They had contingency plans to escape if that became an issue, but Andy doubted Rick came in and agreed to hand over his weapons at the front desk just so they could talk about the building’s blueprints. “Speaking of Gabe . . .”

“Fine, yes. I’m here about him.”

The day officially turned to shit. They had been at it for a year, Rick and Gabe, locked in a family disagreement ever since Rick dropped his emotional bombshell. Andy dreaded taking a wrong step.

“I’m not getting in the middle of the game of mutually assured destruction you two are playing,” Andy said, even though he had long ago sided with Gabe.

Rick waved off the concern. “That’s not what this is about.”

Andy didn’t want to know what accusations Gabe and Rick were currently lobbing back and forth. But as soon as he thought it, he realized that wasn’t quite true. The unrelenting tension outside the office grew more, not less annoying and Andy wished it would end. “Have you talked to him?”

“Last time I tried he threatened to blow my balls off if I didn’t leave his property.”

Andy laughed. Couldn’t help it. He could almost see Rick standing outside the big gate while Gabe welcomed him with a gun. “You gotta admire the simplicity of his threats.”

Rick leaned forward with his elbows balanced on his knees. “I need you to get in touch with him.”

Just as suspected, Rick wanted to suck him into the middle of this. Andy had no trouble taking a pass on that. His personal life was enough of a shitshow without inviting these two to dump their garbage at his feet. “He’s out of contact.”

“This is about work. He’s guarding Natalie Udall, and you know where he is.”

Well, shit. So much for hoping Rick didn’t know what happened inside Tosh’s walls. Andy always assumed that Rick sat in his top secret, no-one-knows-he’s-out-there-watching office and kept tabs on them, but now he had confirmation.

“I actually don’t.” Andy held up a hand before Rick could call bullshit. “Deniability.”

So much of what they did at Tosh depended on secrecy. Rick might not work for Tosh, but he understood black-ops. Had spent most of his adult life heading up a group innocently enough called The Defense Initiative. He ran assets in the United States and overseas, providing backup on intelligence operations where the government needed a wall between what it could do by statute and what it needed to do to get the job done, legal or not.

Rick’s work helped people sleep better at night, even though they never knew he existed or that he even did the work. Tosh got off the ground as quickly and as successfully as it did because Rick had thrown work their way. Back then Rick and Gabe got along. Now Andy doubted Gabe would accept a ride across town from Rick.

“But you’re in contact.” Rick blew out a long breath. “Look, Andy, this is serious. Gabe’s job and my job just collided.”

Which in Rick-speak meant not “personal” but “work related,” and that got Andy’s attention. “Tell me.”

“Some people are concerned about Natalie’s loyalty. That she was privy to some secrets that she now might be tempted to tell.”

Andy had known Gabe was walking into a fucking mess. Forget the crap about this being a routine extract and hold. All those horror stories Gabe had told Natalie to get her on the helicopter, about the CIA potentially sending assassins to quiet her and eliminate all risk regardless of what her extraction agreement said. None of them had convinced Natalie or warned her about anything she didn’t already know, but it now looked like they could be true. Someone was talking to Rick about Natalie, which meant someone was too nervous about her knowledge of internal CIA workings and the mole and the failures that allowed the mole to work his way onto a black-ops team. Gabe could have more than a lone shooter or group on recon knocking on his door.

The trick was to draw the information out of Rick, something that never came easily. “What people?”

Rick tapped his fingertips together. “People who control drones and have assassins on speed dial.”

“You mean people in the CIA who won’t make it look like she died in a freak accident.” And took Gabe with her. Andy knew how this worked. Most of the team Natalie worked with lost their lives in just that way as the mole had panicked and tried to wipe out all of the evidence against him.

Rick nodded. “Her being out there, not communicating, not where they can see her and watch her, makes some people with a lot of power and even more to lose very nervous.”

Fucking Gabe and this fucking assignment. They dealt with life-or-death situations every day. Gabe never flinched, but in those cases he had a team with him, resources. Open communication. None of that was in play here. “That’s bullshit. She’s not a threat to national security.”

As usual, Rick didn’t show any emotion. His expression remained blank, and the tapping of his fingertips continued a steady beat. “I agree, but I didn’t give any orders here.”

“But there is an operation to locate her and bring her in?” That Gabe could handle on his own. A full-scale attack designed to wipe her out of existence might be a different thing. “This someone in the CIA, or group of someones, hired you to track Natalie, correct?”

“We’re speaking hypothetically, of course.” Rick sat back with his perfect posture honed by years in the military.

Andy’s patience expired. “Rick.”

“It’s a watch-only mission. I send my people in to make sure she isn’t making contact with . . . undesirables.” Rick almost smiled as he said it. “That she isn’t selling information about holes in CIA security that would allow for a foreign government to infiltrate the organization and plant someone inside. That she isn’t talking with the wrong people. Maybe other people who are disgruntled with the CIA.”

“In other words, one of her old bosses fears she’s turned.” The idea was so ludicrous it made Andy want to shoot someone. “Natalie Udall, a woman who’s dedicated her entire adult life to the CIA and the protection of this country.”

“Basically, the job is to make sure she’s out there holding up her end of the agreement as promised.”

Relief flooded through Andy, but skepticism rushed in behind. “Do you believe that? We both know you could find her and then the next order you get will be for you to send someone in to take her out, all in the name of God and country.”

Under that scenario Andy could have one brother out there trying to protect her and the other trying to kill her. The idea made him hate the division between Gabe and Rick even more.

“Some powerful people have a lot to lose if she talks about what she knows. Operational details.” Rick kept tapping those fingers.

Rick danced around the topic in general terms, but Andy knew they were really talking about the problem with the mole. The job that cost Natalie her job and almost cost his ex, Elijah Sterling, his life. “I read Natalie’s file. She had intel on everything from black bag jobs to abductions and rendition.”

“It’s more than that. From what I’ve been able to learn, she wasn’t the type to just hang out in the room. She pushed operations in the directions she thought they should go, including the mole hunt everyone else but her saw as a waste of time.”

“You mean, the point where she was right and everyone else was wrong.” Andy agreed with Gabe on this point. Natalie’s smarts and instincts had trumped those of most of the men around her. Could be one or two of those disgruntled lifetime desk jockeys didn’t like her skills or her agreement to leave the agency without trouble. “She should have run that damn place.”

“I agree, but there’s a faction that doesn’t. Others are smart enough to know harming her, going after her, means blowing her extraction agreement and setting in motion whatever contingency plan she and her lawyer—”

“Bast.”

“—worked out.”

“The latter group seems too smart to be working for the agency.” All the pieces came together in Andy’s head. The brewing internal war threatened to spill out and blow back on Natalie and, by extension, Gabe.

“The intelligent group has convinced the more vocal minority to hold off on taking any action for now and send in someone to watch her,” Rick said in a flat voice.

Andy did not like where this was headed. “Which is where you come in, I assume.”

“Gabe can’t kill the guy who is about to start watching him because that person the CIA is sending to check on Natalie works for me.”

It sounded so innocent, but the history between Rick and Gabe came with a load of baggage. If Gabe tipped from frustrated to furious while he was out there with Natalie, he could lose his edge. Gabe had never wavered in his dedication to the job before, but the issues with Rick were personal. They went right to the very heart of who Gabe was and what he believed.

“Goddamn it, Rick.” Andy tried to push down the anger simmering inside him, but it spilled out. Rick’s bombshell would fuck up all of their lives, not just Gabe’s. “Are you looking for a new reason to piss Gabe off?”

“I’m trying to resolve our personal issues separate from this, but I can’t even get there if he kills one of my men. He will touch off a landslide of shit from the CIA.”

As if those two needed one more wall erected between them. That meant Andy had to step in, like it or not. “How close is your person to finding Gabe’s location?”

Rick switched from tapping his fingertips together to drumming them on the armrest. “That depends on how long it takes for you to give it up.”

“Wouldn’t even if I could.” That’s how this worked. They had emergency protocols and ways to track each other down if communication cut out, but the specific details of where a team, or in this case Gabe, took an asset stayed with the team leader. The fewer who knew the safe location, the better.

“You can point me in the right direction and I’ll ferret the rest out.” Typical Rick. He didn’t dig for details because he had to know there were none to give. So, he circled back and ran at the problem another way. “Look, the CIA wants a check-in with Natalie now. That means surveillance and proof she is upholding her end of the deal. I get why she ran, and it was smart, but her being in hiding isn’t helping to smooth over the concerns.”

On one level Andy appreciated what Rick was trying to do—handle the matter on his terms, which made it less likely Gabe would need to take action. But this still amounted to an assignment implosion. Rick might act as though officials only contacted him, but there could be others. Rick could accidentally be leading the real killers right to Natalie.

“Your job sucks.” In that moment, Andy thought they all needed to rethink their chosen career paths. Forget his war hero father. Forget the mother he lost too young. Doing this shit day after day took a toll.

“If my men do the check, we don’t need to worry about the safety of Gabe and Natalie. I can make this happen. Bring Gabe home faster and safe.”

“You owe him,” Andy said, adding the unspoken words he wanted out in the open.

“Like I don’t know that.”

That was something. Andy chalked it up to personal growth or some such shit, but still. “He’s going to fucking hate the idea of you stepping into the middle of his assignment.”

“I’ll send a man. Gabe won’t kill him. We can work together on this without the CIA really knowing.”

Andy almost hated to ask the question. “Then what?”

A shrug. An exhale. Rick worked his way through all the gestures before finally spitting out a sentence. “After the job is done I’ll work on repairing the personal damage.”

That struck Andy as a “too late” issue, but he didn’t say it. “Remind me to take a vacation during those days. Preferably one out of the country.”

“I’ll get him to listen to me.”

“It’s like you don’t know our brother at all.” After all these years, after all the fighting, Andy didn’t understand how that level of ignorance was possible.

But Rick would learn that the hard way, just like he did with everything else. For being the oldest Rick sure did screw up the concept of family loyalty pretty often. Between Rick’s stubbornness and Gabe’s refusal to even listen, Andy had just about had it with being the youngest MacIntosh brother.

“He’ll forgive me.” Rick said the words, but the rock-hard certainty of his voice stumbled on the delivery.

Andy could not imagine a world where that could happen, and he really couldn’t blame Gabe for making any truce difficult. “You know something I don’t?”

Rick shook his head. “He can’t stay mad forever.”

That sick feeling of rawness crept back into Andy’s gut. Yeah, Rick didn’t get Gabe at all.

FIVE

Gabe lifted the handle and swung the maul. The tool looked like a cross between an axe and a sledgehammer. He’d found it in the supply shed along with large pieces of wood, clearly cut by a chainsaw earlier in the season, before the snow started to fall. Cutting them even smaller seemed like the best way to burn off energy without doing it the way he wanted to do it.

He set the head of the maul in the log and lifted. It glided through the air, straight down in a vertical line through a mix of gravity, momentum and strength. He enjoyed the rhythmic thumping as he whacked into the middle of each block. The repetitive motion started a welcome burning in his shoulders.

The snow had stopped falling and the wind died down. The exercise kept him warm in his quilted flannel jacket and thick boots as he worked. So did her stare. He could feel it as the sweat rolled down his back. Natalie, on the porch, watching.

“How do you entertain the other women you bring up here?” she asked, the amusement obvious in her tone.

Just the sound of her voice sent a flush of warmth racing through him. “This is a safe house, not the back of a Chevy.”

He lifted the maul again and brought it down with a heavy thwack. Sending the quarters flying brought a kick of satisfaction. Gave him something to focus on besides her, and God knew he wanted to look at her.

“It was an innocent question,” she said with that soft southern lilt.

Sexy-sounding or not, he somehow doubted that. “Uh-huh.”

This woman thrived on intel gathering. She knew how to drill down, ask the right question. Set someone off and test his patience. He didn’t think she’d turn those skills off in her private life, which totally sucked for him. He’d been interrogated, soft and hard, and didn’t need a repeat of either.

Thwack.

“Are you immune to the cold or something?” she asked.

He stopped before he could lift the maul for another swing. “No.”

“Ah, we’re back to curt responses.”

“Never left them.” He made the mistake of looking at her then. Forget yelling at her to get back inside. She stood there, leaning against a post, wearing his thick down jacket and wrapped in two blankets with an oversized hat plopped on her head. Only pink cheeks and those big eyes peeked out. “I’m not a big talker.”

But he was a fucking goner. One quick glance in her direction and his common sense fizzled. He couldn’t even see skin, and what few brain cells he had left blinked out as images of her, under him, over him, filled his head.

“You must be a joy on a stakeout.”

She seemed a little confused about the difference between an Army sniper and a detective. No way she made that mistake except on purpose, which meant she’d carefully crafted the questions to get at something else.

He balanced the head against the chopping block and leaned against the handle. “I don’t really do those.”

Her head fell to the side and that soft blond hair, now dry, slipped over her shoulder. “What do you do?”

“Now?” He followed the direction of the question but couldn’t figure out where it led.

“Other than swing that axe, I mean.” She pointed at the handle as her gaze wandered across his shoulders and down to his stomach.

“Maul. And I think you know the general gist of my job.” Not that he could or would explain more. His clients deserved confidentiality. He extended it to her just as he did all the others.

She made an exaggerated show of dropping her head forward and sighing. “Honestly, this is going to be the longest few days of—”

“Weeks.”

“I’m ignoring that.” She pinned him with a serious glare. “Can’t really imagine not killing you if we stay up here for weeks and don’t say or do anything.”

She’d basically summed up the reason he stood outside in the frigid weather chopping wood when they already had piles of it stacked up under tarps in the dry shed. Not that they had a lot of choices for activities that didn’t include the bed or the outdoors. Other than a pile of mysteries with torn covers, a deck of cards and an old laptop loaded with a few movies and nothing more, they were on their own for entertainment. Next time he picked a safe house, he’d pick one with Internet service. “You want to go to a movie?”

“What?”

She clearly missed the sarcasm. “This is about keeping you safe.” When she continued with the narrow-eyed frown, he skipped right to the point. The one he thought he’d made when he dragged her under that shower spray. “Hell, I don’t even want you outside.”

Instead of getting the hint and heading back in, she pushed away from the post. Took a few steps then started down the stairs. “I’m assuming you set up a perimeter.”

Now that was insulting. As if this was his first damn day on the job. “Of course.”

“Don’t you think you should tell me where in case I accidentally walk into it? While you’re at it, I need the locations of those two emergency drop sites. Just in case.”

A trained operative turned handler turned administrator. While he intended to fill her in and would, he couldn’t quite see her racing around without a care. “There’s less chance of any trouble if you stay inside.”

She stopped on the bottom step. Didn’t venture into the snow this time. “I’m not someone who just sits around.”

“I can appreciate that.” Neither was he. He worked hard and played even harder. He didn’t hover or sit around watching one game after another in a recliner until his ass fell asleep. He got up and did things.

She shrugged. “Then entertain me.”

His mind went blank. Totally fucking blank.

“Oh my God.” She burst out laughing. “You should see your face.”

The sound echoed around him, wiping out every dark thought and the last of his frustration over her refusal to just follow his directions without question. “Do you know your accent comes out when you do that?”

“What?”

“Smile.” There, in the background. The southern melody. The way she hit certain words. The light that brightened inside her, if only for a second, while she sparred with him and let the rest fall away.

She held his gaze for an extra beat before glancing away. All of a sudden, something in the sway of the towering trees held her attention. “Back to my point.”

“You want me to keep you busy.” A list of possibilities filled his head, each one dirtier than the one before. “Right.”

“Then entertain me.”

The handle dug into his palm as he tightened his grip. “You’re playing a dangerous game here, Natalie.”

A whooshing sound had them both turning to the side. Snow dropped off high branches in large clumps and crashed into a pile at the edge of the small open area around the cabin.

Nature provided the diversion. Gabe jumped on it. Whatever coursed through his veins likely hit her as well. He didn’t buy into the idea of men being more sexual than women. The one looking at him right now, picking each word for maximum impact on his senses and taking his nerves to the snapping point, was no shrinking violet. But he had his limits, so he went with safe.

“I was talking about a game of Twenty Questions.” Not that they hadn’t studied each other’s files . . . or at least the information that other people, even people with clearances and access, could unbury. The stuff she kept hidden, the information locked inside her and in unmarked files somewhere, did interest him.

“You won’t know if I’m telling the truth.”

The woman had a good point. Not that he’d conceded that just yet. “I will.”

“You’re some kind of human lie detector?”

He fought to keep his mind on the mundane conversation and off the hours that lay ahead. The night he had to get through. “Possibly.”

She rubbed her boot over the salt he’d thrown on the step after clearing it off. “Indulge me.”

The scraping sound screeched across his brain. “I thought I was doing that when I agreed not to tie you to the bed.”

Her foot slid to a stop. “Is that your thing?”

“Actually, yes.” She just stood there. Not quite what he expected. Hell, he deserved for her to tell him to fuck off, but she didn’t. “No comeback to that?”

“You don’t scare me.” She tightened her grip on the edges of the blanket. “Having sex with you doesn’t scare me.”

It scared the piss out of him for some reason. “So that we’re clear, what I’d do to you in bed would be about pleasure, not pain.”

Silence roared between them. The creaks of the cabin and regular thuds of the snow dropping off trees blended into nothingness as they stood there, a few feet apart, with the words hovering between them.

She broke the spell with the muffled clap of her gloved hands. “Back to the game.”

Damn but he liked her style. She didn’t back down from a challenge. “You have to earn it.”

She snorted. “I almost hate to ask what that means.”

He held up a finger and waited until her eyebrow lifted in response. He’d piqued her curiosity. Good. A quick jog to the shed and he was back with a hatchet in one hand and a roll of red tape in the other. Using the chopping block, he balanced an extra piece of wood against another.

“I give up. What are we doing?” She came the rest of the way down the steps to stand beside him.

Before answering, he used the tape to create a makeshift circle on the log balanced and facing them. More of a hexagon, but close enough. He tapped the center. “If you hit the target, you get to ask a question.”

Her gaze bounced from the red tape to the weapon in his hand. “Hatchet throwing?”

“You told me you have a lot of skills.” He’d bet this woman could adjust to most situations, including this one. And if not, fine. He wasn’t really in the mood to unload about his life anyway.

She shot him a sexy smile. “I meant the indoor kind.”

The ground crumbled beneath him. He was amazed his knees didn’t buckle from the force of the need driving through him. But he somehow forced his arm to lift and held the hatchet out to her, handle first. “Unless you want me to take you inside and test both of our control, you should think about throwing.”

She took the hatchet and spun it around in her hand by the handle, looking far too comfortable with the lethal instrument as they moved back. “One of these times I’m going to accept your not-so-subtle offer before you rescind it again and hide behind your moral code.”

The back-and-forth, the flirting . . . so dangerous. Every time he let his mind wander and slipped in a bit of innuendo, she rose to the challenge. One of these times he’d lose the will to walk a line back, then the real fun, and all the trouble he feared, would start.

He kept guiding her back until they reached a distance that guaranteed this wouldn’t be an easy task for either of them. Unless she had experience with this. He didn’t. Other targets, others games—yes. Not this particular one, but he guessed the skills would transfer. “I’ll look forward to that.”

“Not very professional of you.” While walking, she turned and dropped the blanket on the steps before looking at him again. “I thought you said you didn’t fuck on the job.”

Hearing the harsh word in her soft voice shoved him right to the edge. She was playing with him now. Playing and winning. “One hit and you get a question.”

“I think I’m familiar with the rules.” She let out a low whistle. “You are a man who likes his rules.”

When she finally reached the start line he drew with the toe of his boot, he moved around her. Let his lips travel over her soft hair as their arms touched and he shifted to stand behind her. His mouth lingered by her ear. “Oh, and when I hit the target I get to ask one of you.”

She kept her focus on the target a rough twelve feet away. “Most of what I know is classified.”

“Spare me the theatrics.” He hated to pull back. Had to mentally order his muscles to obey and put some room between them. “You get three chances. Yes or no?”

She spared him a quick glance that let him know she’d accepted the challenge before stripping her gloves off and dropping them by her feet. “What you mean to say is I’ll get three questions. Because I will not miss.”

“I like the confidence.” Hell, he was starting to like everything about her. Even those times when she got all haughty and demanding. He definitely liked her now, when her playful competitive side came through. “Hot.”

She aimed. Really aimed. Lined up her feet then shifted her weight right before taking a step forward. Her arm rose over her shoulder and ended empty as if she’d just shaken someone’s hand.

Gabe’s gaze went from her wrist to the target. The blade wedged into the log, cutting right through the tape. Of course she could throw a hatchet. Why didn’t that surprise him? “Even hotter.”

“That will teach you to underestimate me.”

“Yes, it will.” He walked over and jimmied the blade out of the log.

She waited until he stood beside her again to say anything. “Where are we?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Montana, east of the Continental Divide.”

“Huh.” Her gaze traveled over the horizon. “Not what I expected.”

“I’m an enigma.”

“Not quite the word I’d use.”

He’d debated going somewhere closer to D.C. but decided they needed unpopulated and away. “But it’s colder than usual for this time of year, and there’s much more snow than I anticipated.”

“You couldn’t check the weather report before the plane took off?” Her eyes narrowed. “And you’re still not forgiven for drugging me, by the way. That one is going to haunt you. It will circle back around and bite you in the ass. Be forewarned.”

He had a feeling her real level of anger didn’t match her threats. She could have woken up in a rush and come after him. She hadn’t. Not really. It was as if, on some level, she understood how the operation spun out.

“I wanted snow. The easier to hide you in, my dear.” And that was true, so he stopped there and held out his palm to prove he held the hatchet. “My turn.”

He skipped the big show and the perfect form. He’d been throwing things at targets since he could walk. His father, the perfect military man who vowed to raise the perfect future soldiers, would drag all three boys outside and teach them how to shoot at cans and throw knives. The hatchet weighed more, but the technique should be about the same. He squinted, lining up the target as he concentrated, then let go.

As the blade hit, she swore under her breath. “Figures.”

She wasn’t a great loser, but that didn’t exactly surprise him either. He guessed she didn’t get all that much practice. “Why join the CIA?”

“To serve my country.” She didn’t miss a beat. Threw out the answer then reached for the hatchet.

No way was he accepting that answer. “Bullshit responses not allowed.”

She glared. He glared back.

She finally broke the stare-off with an eye roll. “There are men who need to be tracked down and killed. Forget the excuses about hard childhoods and not having enough milk when they were babies or being told the truth about Santa too early or whatever ridiculous excuse passes for a reason not to take personal responsibility these days. Some view human destruction as a game, and those men need killing. They have to be stopped.”