Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (4 page)

“How is it possible that you lecture at universities?”

“I finished college very early,” she said.

“Easy enough with the money Wells has,” he sneered.

“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “I’m cold,” she continued, gesturing to the window. “Can you please hand me my jacket?”

He crossed the room and removed the light blue jacket from her closet, throwing it to her. When Sophie winced at the contact, Aidan’s mouth tightened. He hadn’t thought about her having to catch it with her messed up hand.

“Sit,” he said. She did, and he emptied out her purse on the mattress. “Do you need any of this?”

“My inhaler,” she said timidly, pointing at it. “Maybe the eye drops? Or the mints?”

“Fine.” He put the items she requested back in her purse. “Anything else?”

“How long am I going to be with you?”

Aidan raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t an answer she’d be getting.

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Fine. I need the birth control from the bathroom. There are also some muscle relaxers that I might have to take. Get the
Lorazapam, too.”

“You take a lot of pills?”

“I get bad cramps, if you must know. I also get anxious easily.” She looked away and he wondered if the admission made her feel vulnerable.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you had anxiety. You’ve stayed pretty calm here tonight.”

“Well, I don’t usually have dislocated fingers to focus on.” She waved her injured hand weekly in the air. “It’s still cold.” He crossed to the window and fit the glass back into the pane, securing it with the tool he kept in his pack.

Then Aidan stalked into the bathroom after giving her a stern warning about what would happen if she moved.

He pulled gauze, tape and the pills she’d requested from the cabinet. The prescriptions were made out to Sophie Green.

Grabbing a tube of sunscreen, he added it to the pile. The sun was hot and they had a long way to go.

Once he got her back to Oliver, though, a sunburn might be the least of her problems. Even if she really wasn’t Veronica, her knowledge of Aidan might make her too much of a liability.

As soon as he’d disappeared into the bathroom, Sophie inspected the cuff on her wrist. The seal was metal, and it was thick enough that it really could contain some kind of explosive. Whether or not Aidan was telling the truth, she wasn’t willing to risk her head trying to pry it off.

He strode back out moments later, and Sophie hadn’t accomplished anything except making her fingers throb worse. Aidan spotted her holding her hand and took it into his own, running one rough finger over her bruised knuckles. Pain flared, but it was already less than it had been moments before.

Still, she resented him for it.

“I’m making sure nothing is fractured,” he explained. Sophie said nothing, just watched while he wrapped her two fingers together with a length of gauze. He was more gentle than she’d have believed a monster could be.

Each loop of gauze put more pressure on the place where she’d been injured. Unwilling to show pain, she closed her eyes and accepted the ache. Once she’d given in to it, it receded. When Aidan was done, he looked at her admiringly and sealed the gauze with medical tape.

“We’ll get something more permanent once we’re on the road,” he said.

“Will I live long enough for them to heal completely?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he reached for a bottle of water from the fridge and untwisted the cap. “It’s going to hurt worse later unless you take something now.” He handed her four orange pills that she recognized as over-the-counter painkillers, then tilted the water bottle so that cool, fresh liquid spilled over her tongue, forcing the pills down her throat.

Again, shadows gathered in his eyes when she winced at the motion of her hand. It was insane of her to think in that moment that his man cared about her pain—but a part of her did. Regret still showed in his motions, his expressions. When he pulled her to her feet, his touch was delicate.

“When is your friend coming back?”

“I don’t know.” She really didn’t. It could be ten minutes or the next morning.

“We need to be gone before she gets back. I can’t allow her to see me.” Any soft thoughts she’d had for Aidan evaporated.

“You can’t touch her. I won’t let you.”

He had the gall to look amused at her threat. “Write a note. Tell her you met someone and that you’re leaving with him. Tell her you’ll meet her back home.”

“She’s never going to believe that. In one million years, Adele would never believe I’d leave with a man I’d just met. Not without saying goodbye.”

“Better be convincing then.” He pulled a few creamy sheets of paper from the desk, then a pen. “If she or anyone else follows us, I can’t promise they’ll be safe.”

Biting back a sarcastic retort, Sophie nodded. She thought for a moment, then leaned over the nightstand and wrote.

Dear Adele,

I hate to do this to you, but I met someone tonight. He’s everything I’ve been looking for in a man. Seriously, you’d pop if you saw him. He’s asked me to visit Egypt with him, and his flight leaves in three hours
.

Oh, Adele, it’s silly. Like you always say, though, it’s important to live a little. I guess I’m going to now. Visiting the pyramids has always been a dream. Enough justification—I’ll be alright. Relax and enjoy the rest of your trip.

Please get Daisy from the kennel if you head to Rome before me. I love you so much. I’ll be safe. I promise.

Love,

Sophie

She signed the night in a large, light scrawl, then thrust the paper at Aidan. “Leave it wherever you want.”

“Who’s Daisy?”

“My dog,” Sophie said. “She’s at a kennel in Paris, near my apartment. She’s going to Rome with me soon.”

He nodded. “Time to go.”

“Will we be going out the window?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “We’re going to walk out the lobby. If you care about your friend, you’d better smile like it’s the best moment of your fucking life.”

“What? Why?”

“In case she asks someone
about you leaving.”

“She won’t—.”

“In case.”

Aidan helped
Sophie secure her purse over her shoulder and then picked up her suitcase. He had nothing of his own to retrieve. Being ready to move immediately was important. Once they were both ready, he set the note down on the counter, and then tucked her injured hand gently into his.

His large, hot palm covered the gauze on her fingers. “For show,” he said.

Sophie took a last look at the heels she’d kicked off when she re-entered the suite. They were cheerful, fun, and she might never see them again. Such a stupid thing to worry over, she thought, but she regretted leaving those heels more than she should have.

He reminded her of the consequences if she decided to run, but he didn’t have to. The gun in his waistband and the bracelet on her wrist were inducements enough even if she’d planned to run. Which she didn’t.

Chapter Four

He kept her pressed against him in the elevator. Aidan told himself that cameras were everywhere—and it was true. The darker truth was that he liked the sweet perfume of her skin and the heat of her slight body tucked against his. Her hair was almost dry and every breath he took was filled with its scent.

Sophie was nervous, he knew. Scared of him. She’d be stupid if he wasn’t, but every tremor that shook her body made him more aware that he might have made a huge mistake. What if the calls that had helped him find her were just innocent calls to the adoptive father she didn’t know was more of a monster than the man standing next to her?

He just hoped to God she didn’t do anything stupid in the lobby. So much more was at stake than just his identity, and if she wasn’t Veronica then he had no idea how he was going to stop what would happen.
Without the documents, there was no cure. Oliver had made that clear. Agents were scouring every corner of the word for Lyle, who’d conveniently disappeared when the cure was stolen.

Maybe
he was losing his edge, Aidan thought bitterly. It would have been easier to wait for her friend to come back, shoot her and then finish his interrogation until he was sure beyond a doubt that she wasn’t Veronica. That the thought occurred to him made him wonder if it wasn’t time to cut ties with Second Division for good. He wanted to return to Delta Force, where his hands at least felt clean, but his superiors hadn’t been able to give him the time or agency to find and kill Bartek.

Of course, killing the friend would have been simple. It’s not like his hands were clean of blood, he reasoned. It was the nature of the business. Bystanders died. Witnesses, too, sometimes. Aidan did all he could to avoid it, even when others didn’t. Part of him still clung to that Oklahoma upbringing and remembered what it was like when his sister didn’t make it home from
the bus stop.

He didn’t want to do that to anyone else’s family. Picturing a family huddled around a phone, waiting for any news made him feel sick.
Never getting any news was even worse, because you never really had closure. Aidan missed his sister, and the loss of her was what drove him into the Army and Delta Force.

Besides, Aidan didn’t want to see the look on Sophie’s face if she had to watch her friend die.

The elevator opened and he studied her before stepping out. Her face was still red. Clean of makeup, she had a freshness that he rarely saw in women. The bruises on her face were there, but they weren’t yet dark enough to draw the attention of someone who wasn’t looking for them.

Without meaning to, he rubbed his thumb over her palm. It was so soft. Softer than a woman who fought with her bare hands and weapons for ten years would have. Sophie cringed at the
contact, but he knew he wasn’t hurting her. He didn’t let go; it was better if she was scared of him. Better for her to shake and tremble. If she defied him, he knew all his better intentions would be muted.

Then he’d still have to find his way out of the hotel.

They were halfway to the gilded front doors when he heard a woman call out. “Sophie!”

Aidan’s grip on her hand burned like hell, crushed her already-abused fingers together and she wasn’t even sure if he was aware of it. For one wild moment, Sophie considered screaming. Ramming her knee between his legs. It was one thing to decide to go with the beautiful, terrible man.

It was another thing to actually do it.

He walked faster than she did, his long legs eating up the tile. Sophie had to scramble to avoid getting dragged behind him. People in expensive jewelry pushed past them on either side, and all she could think was that they’d sleep well tonight. She might be dead tomorrow.

She’d accepted that from the moment he’d twisted her first finger from its mooring. Sophie knew pain, had experienced it regularly beginning with the first time she fell out of an apple tree at her neighbor’s orchard. But she didn’t court it.

Brave people were all well and good, but she’d never wanted to be that woman. That was for better people.

Then she heard
Adele call out her name. She turned automatically, and felt Aidan drag her up tighter against his side. His muscled leg pressed against her softness and Sophie remembered the knife he’d slid into his boot.

This wasn’t a reprieve. The lean, sinewy arm he’d wrapped around her shoulders would stop her from getting away. Aidan could easily overpower her; that much was obvious.

It hadn’t truly terrified her until she heard Adele’s voice.

Her friend crossed the blue and green lobby confidently, drawing eyes as she went. In her wake was a man with a smile like he’d just hit the jackpot.

“Believe this,” Aidan said in a harsh whisper. “I will shoot her in the head if she tries to stop us. Do you think anyone in the lobby will recover quickly enough to stop me from dragging you out of here?”

He let his arm relax so she could turn to
Adele, but he kept his hand on her, a tangible reminder of his presence.

Sophie forced a grin over her dry teeth and shot up her uninjured hand. “
Adele!” Her merriment sounded forced to her own ears.

“Convince her,” Aidan bit out just before
Adele reached them.

“Where are you heading, darling?” The woman had a cultured voice, he thought. It was oddly devoid of accent, too. He couldn’t place her country of origin. Not surprising, Aidan thought, since her passport had been even thicker with stamps than Sophie’s.

Adele
shot him a curious look, but there was no malice in it. Her fingers wrapped around Sophie’s wrist and pulled her away from Aidan just a little. His body went taut, but neither woman went far. “What happened?” Adele asked. “Have you been crying?”

“Listen, Hel—.” Sophie trailed off, seemed to waver as she searched her friend’s eyes. Aidan’s hand tensed.

She must have seen the slight movement, because her next words came out in a rush. “I’ve met,” she said, lowering her voice, “an amazing man. This is Aidan,” she continued, nodding at him.

“I thought you were going to stay in the room tonight?”

“I was going to, but I actually hurt my hand on the way to the room and he took me to the clinic.”

“What happened?”
Adele looked down at Sophie’s fingers.

“I tripped,” she said with an artless smile. Her blonde hair fell over her face when she looked down shyly and Aidan was impressed at how convincing the whole thing was.

“Okay, but what’s with the suitcase? Why are your eyes so red?”

“I cried when I fell,” Sophie explained. Aidan noticed that her
uninjured fingers fluttered when she spoke. It was oddly charming. “The suitcase, well, I left you a note in the suite.”

“What did it say?”
Adele’s eyes narrowed and darted over Sophie’s shoulder to lock on Aidan.

“He’s going to Egypt for a meeting,” said Sophie. “I’m going to go with him. He promised to show me the pyramids.”

“Do you really think that’s safe?”

“Of course,” Sophie said. Her smile looked a little manic—too many teeth—but Aidan couldn’t fault her tone. “He actually knows Professor
Quelton, from Suffolk.”

“Really?”
Adele’s lips loosened a little and she smiled for the first time since spotting Sophie’s hand. “That’s exciting. What a coincidence.”

“Yes,” said Aidan, moving forward to wrap an arm around Sophie. She relaxed against him. Whether she was playing her part or simply seeking a refuge from stress, he cooperated and kept her close. “But I need to acquire an extra ticket, so we really do need to leave.”

“Sorry, Adele,” said Sophie. “Do you mind if I go?”

Aidan wondered what Sophie would do if her friend said yes.

“Of course not,” she said. “I’m sure Brad and I can find our own fun.”

“Brad?”

“Hi,” said the husky guy behind Sophie’s friend. “Adele helped me find my way back to the hotel.”

“I was on my way to a club with those boys when I saw Brad trying to ask directions. And of course, his Arabic is terrible, but he refused to switch to English.” She laughed. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”

“I’m guessing the pretty eyes didn’t hurt either,” said Sophie wryly.

“Nor did the suit.”
Adele laughed and pinned Aidan with another look. “Are you sure you need to leave right now? We could all grab a drink first and you could take a later flight.”

“The plane leaves in an hour. I’ve cut it close as is.”

“Damn. That’s too bad.” Adele reached out and wrapped Sophie in her arms. “Love you, Soph. I’ll see you in Rome. When?”

“Not sure exactly,” Aidan answered. “I have to fly to Dublin after Egypt and she said she might come with me.”

“Well, the semester starts in three weeks, so I’ll see you by then no matter what. Make sure you’re on time—it’s so hard to fix a bad first impression. Remember Frankfurt?”

“How could I forget?” Sophie laughed, but Aidan could hear the tension under it, and he wondered how
Adele missed it. He supposed that people see what they want to, and thinking that her friend was off on a wild, spontaneous romantic adventure was what the vapid woman wanted to believe.

“We need to leave now, Sophie.” Damn, Aidan thought immediately. His tone had been too tight.
Adele had noticed the snap in it, and she moved a step closer to Aidan.

“Listen, time frame, you’re pulling my friend away from her vacation. Don’t speak to her like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said, angling her body between Aidan and Adele. “I did tell him we’d be gone ten minutes ago.”

“You don’t have to leave with him.” Worry clouded
Adele’s eyes and Aidan damned himself, furious that he’d become frustrated enough to bark an order at Sophie and create suspicious where there was none.

Sophie saw Adele’s hand reach out as if she was going to grab the suitcase from Aidan. She tried to calm her increasingly-agitated breathing, looking around at all the people in the lobby. It could become a bloodbath so quickly.

When Sophie moved to block
Adele, her friend’s eyes traveled up and down from Sophie’s bandaged hand to her swollen eyes. For the first time, she’d taken note of the bruises, the swollen lip. “What really happened to you?”

“I just hit the ground so hard. Damn margaritas.”

“Sophie, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we don’t know this guy. Maybe it’s not safe for you to just go off with him.”

“
Adele, stop.” Sophie girded her lions and then turned to Aidan, twined her arms around his warm neck and, raising to her toes, kissed him. It started soft, just a simple brush of her lips against his. He tasted like peppermint.

She sighed without meaning to and leaned into him, touching her mouth to his again. Aidan groaned low in his throat, then pulled her in so that his body was flush against hers. People
pushed past them as he kissed her, but Sophie felt for those moments as if they were the only two in the room.

Aidan took control of the deception and pressed his body to hers so they were joined from thigh to chest. She could feel his thick erection pressing against her stomach, and would have pulled away in shock if he hadn’t kept her locked in his grip. Small sounds came from her lips when they parted for a moment, and for the life of her, Sophie couldn’t help but lean in for another kiss.

Her body felt frenzied, like everything in her sparked and tightened. One hand moved up to tangle in his hair, which was like crisp strands of silk against her fingers. She moaned and opened her mouth, giving his tongue access.

The spell was broken when
Adele, her worries assuaged, giggled behind her.

“Enough, Sophie.” She had moved away from her and Aidan and was standing closer to Brad. “I’ll stop being a bitch. Go. Have fun. Call me.”

Sophie met Aidan’s eyes and saw the same shock there she knew was in her own. Neither had expected that the kiss would affect them so strongly. The clouds in his eyes broke and his lips twisted into a lazy smile. He reached for her arm, but she broke away and wrapped her arms around Adele.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Call me as soon as you can. Be safe.”

“I’ll try.” Brad slipped his arm through
Adele’s, and she raised her other one to wave goodbye to Sophie and Aidan as they made their way to the doors. When she looked back again, Adele was gone.

Her course was set. She was going
with the strong, enigmatic man who kissed like a god.

She was furious with herself for kissing him, furious that a man who’d brought her such pain could reduce her to a hot, wet puddle on the hotel floor without even touching her skin with his hands. It was his fault, Sophie decided, for forcing her into that position.

“You don’t know her,” she said suddenly, desperate for him to understand what she’d done. “She’s doesn’t let go of things when she’s worried. I couldn’t think of another way to convince her. You said you’d shoot her if I didn’t. You would have.”