Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (3 page)

But he had respected her once.
Three years before, in Cairo, Aidan had gotten to a man that Veronica was scheduled to meet with ten minutes before she arrived. While the obese, sweating man had reclined in a chair and glanced at the closet where Aidan was crouched, he waited for Veronica to walk in. She finally did, a cloud of lemon and tobacco following her, her hair a dark cap that kissed her cheeks. They were too thin, then, he remembered.

Aidan had listened to the conversation, hoping for information before he sprang from his hiding spot. That was the easy way. But the Egyptian man had looked at the closet one time too many.
Her bloodshot eyes darted over to the door and in the next motion the man was missing half his head. Blood and brain matter decorated the closet door.

As a little fuck you to Aidan, Veronica had followed the murder with a chair jammed under the doorknob. She left the room with raspy laughter on her lips. It had taken him twenty minutes to get out and by then she was long gone.

Aidan didn’t mourn the dead man. He was a piece of shit with enough access that Oliver had required him alive. If Veronica hadn’t killed him, Aidan had made up his mind too—there were too many rumors about little girls disappearing from the marketplace, and that was something he couldn’t let go, even for his boss. If the dead fucker hadn’t looked at the closet…it was the closest he’d ever come to capturing Veronica.

Of course, that little endeavor had spurred her to try to take him out of the g
ame when they met up in Beijing two months later.

It wasn’t his fault, though, he reasoned. Veronica regularly dropped out of sight for months at a time and Oliver usually had him tasked in parts of the world where she never traveled. Still, she’d eluded him for years, across continents and time zones. He had to know if this was the woman, or if Veronica had fooled him again.

If he had an innocent woman tied to a chair with bruises on her face and hands.

“I might be a monster,” he admitted, “but you saying it really puts us in a pot-kettle situation.”

“I’m not a monster,” she said. Angry color rose on her cheeks. “But I’ll kill you if I ever get out of these ties.” She ruined any effect her weak threat may have had by looking away when she made it.

“You were the one who stopped me from disabling the bomb in
Ottowa. Just found out about that on my way here, by the way.”

“Not me.” Sophie bit her lip again and Aidan learned what it meant to be aroused at the worst possible time. “I’ve never even seen a bomb. I’m not a monster. I’m not. I’m not. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. Wouldn’t. You’re the one—.” She broke into sobs again and he felt his stomach clench.

“What about Isabella?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Right.” The reminder of the doe-eyed 16-year old, his boss’s daughter, lit a fire in his gut that eased the muscles. If she was Veronica, then she deserved whatever he did to her.

But if she wasn’t, the Aidan might be the monster she claimed.

He needed to find out whether his mind was playing tricks on him. Whether she was Veronica or just some hapless orphan who’d gotten in his way at the wrong time. Oliver had ordered him to kill her, but from the beginning Aidan had already doubted his ability to do so, no matter how much she deserved it.

Then, he’d been intrigued by the rail-thin, chain-smoking women who executed potential pedophiles and spoke flawless Chinese. Thing was, this woman wasn’t rail-thin and if she smoked, he saw no evidence of it. His brain flashed to her in the bar earlier, learning over her drink. A nearby patron was smoking, and she
waved away the smoke with her hand.

So if he accepted for a moment that it wasn’t Veronica, then what were his options? Did he kill her? It was probably for the best. Sophie had seem him up close enough that she might have an idea what he looked like under his makeup and fake hair. He’d killed for less—especially when he was younger, weaker with disguises and clumsy in his footsteps.

“If you just tell me, this can all go away.” He sat down and looked at her, wanting her to admit that he’d been right all along. “My boss has kill orders on you, but I’ll just let you go. Just tell me where it is.”

“I can’t,” Sophie whispered brokenly. “I don’t even know what it is.” Her lips quivered and it was like a bolt of lightning to his chest. He believed her.

A woman cold enough to kill a man like Dima didn’t regurgitate clichéd threats, her eyes bright with unshed tears, while her lips quivered.

She couldn’t be Veronica.

The girl was too young. Too fresh. For days he’d watched her with single-minded rage clouding his brain, but now it was gone and Aidan’s thoughts were clear. Sophie lacked the rigid control he knew Veronica had in spades.

He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and snapped a quick photo of her, then uploaded it to Oliver.

After the phone was in his pocket again, Aidan’s hand slipped to the butt of his gun and relaxed against it. Better to simply draw, aim and end her immediately. Oliver would probably agree, and he was almost always right. But he couldn’t be sure. If she was Veronica, killing her would sever their best chance of stopping the Synthesis Agenda.

If she wasn’t, then he would have executed a young woman whose only crime was being adopted by a madman and then deciding to take a vacation.

Turning away from her wide eyes, Aidan walked into the bathroom. He dialed a secure number from the phone he kept in his pocket. “Oliver,” he said after punching in his access code. Oliver’s secretary transferred the call immediately without even asking if he was staying safe. Just another sign that things were seriously bad.

“What?”

“Did you get my message?”

“The picture of the girl.”

“Is it Veronica? You’ve had more contact with her than I have. She looks…different. Younger. I can’t tell.”

“It looks like her,” Oliver said, his deep voice slow over the words. “But you’re right about her looking younger. I can’t tell. She’s excellent with disguises.”

“You think I didn’t check for that?”

“Calm down, Aidan. What’s her current status?”

“Tied to the bed and mad as hell. She’s Lyle Wells’ stepdaughter by the way.” The offhand comment made Oliver draw in a deep breath.

“Can you contain her?”

“She’s weaker than the bastard I took down in Moscow last week,” he said.

Oliver sighed. “I wish you’d cut
out those fucking cage matches.”

“I can’t.
He’s still alive.”

He signed again. “Fine, Aidan. Bring her back here. I’ll inspect her myself. If she is Veronica, I’ll get the package out of her. If she’s not, then we’ll have to make other arrangements. She’s Wells’ daughter, so she could be useful.”

The man came out of the bathroom and paced to the window for the third time, then stood silently, looking out at the surf. Sophie didn’t want to attract his attention again. Her pain tolerance was high—something she attributed to regular bikini waxing—but the bright shard of
agony that lanced her brain each time he dislocated a finger was enough to convince her to stay silent.

He didn’t fit into the room. His muscles were thick and ropey, like someone who’d spent more time in the gym than in a library. Next to him, she was dwarfed. But intelligence gleamed in his mossy eyes; Sophie didn’t think Aidan
a man who’d traded brains for brawn. Before he made a choice, she saw his mind calculating the outcomes.

Sophie might have found him attractive if the situation was different. His large body looked so indelicate in the elaborate room. It was full of flounces and draperies, all golden shimmer and purple softness. He was stark white walls, leather couches and unadorned windows.

“How much do you want to live?” The words slipped from his mouth so quietly that she almost didn’t hear them. He braced an elbow against one of the window panels and rested his forehead against the back of his hand. He was the most erratic man she’d ever met; one moment he was separating her bones from their sockets and the next he was staring at the ocean with a wistful tone, almost like he regretted it.

But he wasn’t the kind of man to regret things. Sophie already knew that.

His cold treatment of her in the few minutes after she’d woken up was telling. Aidan had no qualms about his actions. Men who worried about regrets didn’t sneak into hotel rooms or beat helpless women. They wore suits to work, paid their taxes on time, and vacationed in Santa Monica or Miami. They were the kind of men she wanted. Not this man, with his brutal strength and caged anger.

Minutes passed while she considered what Aidan had said. Living wasn’t her top priority, but it was high on the list. Sophie couldn’t think of many things she’d rather do than live.

When he turned to look at her, his pupils were dilated and looked even darker than before. Shark eyes, she thought. “So?”

“So what?”

“How much do you want to live?”

“A lot,” she admitted. “I don’t want to die yet.”

“Then you’re coming with me.” As soon as the words were out, he blanched. It was like he didn’t quite believe them himself. They both waited in silence until he’d finished sorting through whatever thoughts were tumbling around in his brain. Then he walked to the closet and pulled out her suitcase.

“Get dressed,” he said, the words clipped.

“I would, but you might have noticed that I’m tied up.”

“Fine.” He dug through her clothes and pulled out jeans, a t-shirt and cotton underthings, snagging them with his fingers and throwing them onto the bed. “Do these all fit?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

“Understand this, Sophie. Veronica. Whoever you are. What you want doesn’t matter anymore. Until we get to where we’re going, I own you.”

“You don’t own me.”

“I do,” he said, leaning over her. His size was enough to quell her arguments. “You’re full of brave words for a woman who I’ll probably end up wasting at our last stop, but I need you to shut the fuck up while I deal with this.”

“I will not leave this hotel with you.”

For the first time, he smiled. “Yes, Sophie. You will.”

Aidan’s smile chilled her bones and fear, thick and sour, gathered in her stomach. But there was something she didn’t expect: gratitude. She was grateful that he’d decided, for whatever reason, not to kill her. She could work with that.

From the moment he’d surprised her in the bathroom, she’d believed he wouldn’t leave her alive. The man had gotten the better of her, and Sophie had promised herself long ago never to let that happen again.

But he was throwing her clothes on the bed, and the rebellion drained out of her. The deep-set instinct to fight ebbed and let her assess the situation. Sophie didn’t want to die, though she supposed she would for the people she loved or something she believed in. But not here or now. Not at the hands of this man.

“If you fight me, I’ll put a bullet in your head,” he said, using a knife to cut her bonds. Her muscles aches and she ran her good hand up and down her arms to soothe.

“Thank you,” she said, cringing when she realized what words had escaped her mouth.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. Before she could blink, he’d taken her hand, twisted it back and popped the first finger back into the socket. Acid ate through her at the motion, but before she could pull back, Aidan had seized the second and popped it back in
too.

She fell back against the pillows, biting her lip hard to keep from screaming. Sophie didn’t want to agitate him. “We’ll have to get something to set these,” he said, examining her hand.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said, drawing back her hand. Her fingers could move again, but it was excruciating. “Can I please get dressed now?”

He bowed his head and stowed the knife in his boot. Sophie wanted to slam her good hand into his mockingly handsome face, but resisted the urge. She reached for the pink panties he’d thrown on the bed and slipped them on. Having a barrier against his gaze felt good, no matter how thin it was.

Sophie pulled on the light pink bra, t-shirt and jeans. When she bent to slip on her socks, Aidan busied himself by looking through his pack. As soon as she sat up, he snapped a bracelet on her wrist.

“What’s this? Gifts already?”

“If you take it off, it will detonate. If I hit the transmitter, it detonates. Don’t run from me. Don’t fight me.” Sophie’s eyes widened.

“I don’t want to wear this.”

“It’s this or a bullet. Put on your shoes.”

Aidan finished packing her suitcase while she tied her tennis shoes. It was difficult with her fingers so swollen, but she refused to ask him for help.

“How old are you?” The question surprised her, and she looked up at him.

“24,” she said. His face went blank.

It wasn’t possible that she was only 24. He’d been chasing Veronica for
seven years at least—first in Delta Force, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Then in Second Division. If Sophie was telling the truth, then she didn’t deserve any of this.