Hide and Seek (11 page)

“Not long. Three months.”

Not long at all. Duarte never would have taken Alec for the whirlwind type, but then again, all bets were off when it came to the right woman. He’d only seen Lisa a handful of times at the base before she eclipsed any other woman in his eyes.

If she hadn’t been Kyle’s little sister, Duarte would have put the move on her right away. Instead, he’d played it cool. Played it safe. Told himself she was off limits and no matter how much he wanted to look, he’d never touch.

Until the night of that stand-in wedding date and subsequent trip up to his cabin.

And now?

He didn’t want to acknowledge what she meant to him now. Nor how much it would wreck him to lose her. But to lose her to death as Alec had lost his wife?

He didn’t think he could survive that.

Alec stared out at the ocean, contemplative. “I knew she didn’t have long when I asked her to marry me. We’d been messing around in secret for a few weeks, flirting with each other for a lot longer. When I realized she wasn’t healthy, I didn’t want to just keep playing games with her. She deserved better than that, you know?”

“When you say you knew she wasn’t healthy...”

“I knew about the tumor,” Alec confirmed. “Thanks to my so-called gift, I watched her die in my arms twice. Once in the premonition, then again on the day I lost her.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Duarte murmured, staggered by what his friend had done, and by what he had endured. “Sorry for the way I pushed you to tell me about her, too.”

“No apology needed.” Alec lifted his shoulder, gave a mild chuckle. “No one ever counted on you for your diplomacy, anyway. Asshole.”

Duarte smiled at the light jab, relaxed immediately. It felt good to look at his old friend—his brother-in-arms—and think maybe he wasn’t alone in this fight anymore. Risky or not, he believed Alec Colton. He trusted him—with his own life and with Lisa’s.

As for her brother?

“Tell me again about the vision you had about Talon. What was he doing?”

Alec cleared his throat. “I saw him sitting in a room, telling someone about the program and the file he had with intel on the operatives. Giving them names and location information. Real names, John. Not just our codenames. He was giving them everything they asked for.”

“Fuck.” Duarte scowled. “Did you see who he was talking to?”

“No.”

“Kyle’s ability was off the charts, always has been. Easily the strongest of the three of us, anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was one of the strongest of all the operatives. If Phoenix’s enemies have him on their side, they couldn’t ask for a more powerful tool to use against us.” At Alec’s nod of agreement, Duarte exhaled sharply. “For all our sakes, I hope to hell you’re wrong.”

“So do I. But if I’m right?”

“We have to find him,” Duarte said. “We need to have that answer, no matter what it is.”

“Agreed. Because when we find Talon, we’re one step closer to finding the murdering bastards he’s working for.”

“Assuming Kyle’s still alive,” Duarte suggested. “That text he sent to Lisa seems like the act of a desperate man. A terrified man. You first saw him in your vision two months ago. He may have outlived his usefulness.”

“If he hasn’t, and we find him first, he’s gonna wish he was dead,” Alec growled. “If he’s turned traitor, we can’t let him live. You know that, right?”

Hard as it was to consider it, much less deal the punishment should the time come, Duarte nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, I know. There’d be no coming back from that kind of betrayal. No forgiveness.”

Alec was quiet for a moment. He pitched the last of his coffee into the surf. “What about Lisa? You tell her anything about this?”

“No.” Duarte felt a stab of guilt for that. “Not yet. She’s been through a lot these past two days. Hard to find the right time to drop that kind of bomb on her.”

Particularly when he’d been too busy losing himself in her body, in her sweet smiles and tender gazes. He’d been lost in the fantasy, letting himself imagine they could ever have something real and lasting when he’d never had roots anywhere for long. Even now, he knew there was no going back to his cabin again. He was without a home, so what did he have to offer her, even if she wanted to be with him?

And what could he ever hope to do to cushion the anguish he would inflict when he had to explain that he and Alec were now hunting a personal enemy of their own in her beloved brother?

“You gotta tell her, man.” Alec’s voice was sober. “She needs to know about Kyle.”

“What do I need to know about Kyle?”

Lisa’s voice came from behind them.

Duarte’s heart sank, as cold and heavy as a stone in his chest. He pivoted around and found her standing at the crest of the beach, just off the guest room veranda where they’d made love the night before. She wore an oversized terry bathrobe, her hair twisted up in a towel as though she’d just stepped out of the shower.

Her eyes were questioning on him now. Searching and uneasy. “What do you need to tell me, John?”

12

The fact that he didn’t answer made her breath catch in her throat.

But it was the bleak look in John’s eyes as he stood up to face her—the unmistakable guilt and dread she saw in him—that made Lisa’s heart stutter, suddenly frozen in her breast.

“What’s going on?” She glanced to Alec as he got to his feet now, too, but it was John she looked to for answers. She looked to him for honesty and trust, two things that seemed missing from the unreadable expression on his face. “Do you have information on Kyle? Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Then what is it you need to tell me about him?” Her voice rose along with the acid of her mounting fear. “Is he hurt? Is he... oh God, is he dead?”

John shook his head. “We don’t know any of that—”

“Then what?” She couldn’t take his maddening, careful calmness. “Tell me what you do know about him, dammit!”

John swallowed and glanced at Alec, who looked equally reluctant to give her the truth. “We don’t know where he is, or if he’s alive, Lisa. But we do think there’s a chance Kyle’s working with the other side.”

The other side? It took her a second to realize what she was hearing. “Are you saying my brother is a bad guy? Because that’s not possible. It’s absurd. For crissake both of you, he’s been your best friend for more than a decade—”

“I had a vision,” Alec said, his voice grave, more sober than she’d ever heard him before. “The first time I saw the premonition was a couple of months ago. I’ve seen it half a dozen times since, and it’s always the same. I see Kyle giving up classified intel on Phoenix operatives. He’s betraying the program. The only question is, for how long?”

She shook her head. “My brother’s one of the most patriotic, devoted people I know. Just because you think you saw something in a vision, doesn’t make him guilty.”

Even so, she felt sick with the information. Miserable with the very idea, and the fact that John seemed to know about Alec’s premonition, yet hadn’t felt the need to talk to her about it.

And then, as she looked at the two men, at John in particular, a deeper concern took hold of her.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” She could see the weight of it in his somber brown eyes. She saw the other painful truth he’d been shielding her from in keeping Alec’s vision a secret. “If Kyle’s the one who betrayed Phoenix, then you intend to hunt him down. You intend to go after him like your enemy.”

John cursed, low under his breath. “Lisa, if the vision is true, then we don’t have a choice.”

“Will you use me to do it?” She barked out a raw, humorless laugh. “Have you already been using me? Letting me think you care, letting me think you were going to help me find Kyle... God, letting me throw myself at you like an idiot while you and Alec make plans behind my back—”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” John said sternly. “Don’t say it. Don’t even fucking think it.”

When he walked toward her, she backed up several paces. “When were you going to tell me about this? After you fucked me a few more times?”

He bit off a sharp denial, but she was already pivoting away from him. She couldn’t talk to him anymore. She didn’t want to hear anything more, could hardly breathe through the tumult of confusion and outrage and hurt that held her in its grasp.

Storming back into the guest room, she began picking up her clothing. John came in behind her, his presence sucking even more of the air from around her. Her skin tingled in reaction to him, all of her senses instinctively drawing toward him even while she struggled to ignore him.

“It isn’t like that,” he said gently at her back. “I didn’t mean to keep it a secret from you. I just knew it would hurt you to hear it, and I didn’t want to be the one to do it.”

She spun a pained look at him. “Do you think it hurts me any less to find out this way? To be blindsided by the fact that you and Alec are conspiring against my brother?”

John huffed out a curse. “We weren’t conspiring, damn it. We were hashing things out, trying to make sense of it all. You think Alec and I want to believe Kyle’s guilty any more than you do?”

Tears pricked her eyes, but she held them back with fury alone. “Tell me what you’ll do to him if you’re able to find him.”

“Make him tell us the truth. Give him the chance to convince us we’re wrong.”

“And then what?”

A tendon ticked in John’s bearded jaw. “That will depend on Talon.”

“Stop calling him that! His name is Kyle. He was your best friend, John. He thinks of you like a brother. I know because he’s told me so. You and Alec both are like family to him.”

John nodded soberly. “You’re right. Kyle Becker was my closest friend, a brother I’d never had. But when the three of us joined the Phoenix program, we all took an oath—to put the program ahead of anything, and anyone, else. We left our pasts behind us. We devoted our lives to it, Lisa. Our futures, too. That’s how important our work was. We all believed in that, but someone betrayed us. Someone betrayed that oath.”

“Not my brother.” Her voice sounded small, wooden. As if even she was beginning to doubt.

Kyle was her only family. He was all she had in the world. For that reason alone, she would cling to her faith in him.

“I hope you’re right,” John murmured. “Alec and I both hope you’re right. But understand, we have to find out.”

She stared into his handsome face, heartbroken by the solemnity of his expression. “Then I hope you understand that you’ll be doing it without me.”

Turning away, she walked into the bathroom to take the towel off her head. She finger-combed her damp hair and met John’s reflection in the large mirror over the sink. “I want to leave. Right now.”

“No, you don’t. You want to run away. From me. From us.” He shook his head slowly. “But I can’t let you do that.”

“Why not?” she shot back. “Isn’t that what you did five years ago?”

A direct hit. She could see it in the way his mouth pressed into a flat line, his dark eyes piercing her in the glass. “Yeah, I did. And if you think I haven’t spent a lot of those years regretting it, then you’d be wrong about that, too.”

God, she didn’t want to be swayed by his tender words right now. She didn’t want to believe the raw honesty in his deep voice, or the way it made her melt inside.

She wrenched her gaze away from him and busied herself with the makeup and brushes left on the bathroom countertop where she dumped them out last night in search of the condom. Just the thought of making love with him made her legs go a little weak beneath her. Worse, it made her anger lose some of its edge.

She dropped a handful of cosmetics into the cloth bag, then gathered up the scattered brushes. “I can’t do this, Johnny. Please... just go tell Alec and his thug friends I want to get off this island as soon as possible.”

“It’s not that simple, Lisa. I can’t let you go. If anything were to happen to you—” He broke off abruptly, and in her peripheral vision she saw him cross his arms over his broad chest. “I need to keep you close to me, where I know you’ll be safe.”

“Safe? With you?” She crammed a couple of eyeliner pencils into the little bag and glanced up at him in the mirror. “I’m not feeling very safe with you right now, John. I’m feeling used. I’m feeling sick with myself that I came running to you as soon as I got Kyle’s text. Too bad I don’t have the gift of precognition, too, or I might’ve saved us both a lot of trouble.”

With the last of her things stuffed into the cosmetic case, she tugged on the zipper to close it. The lining had a small tear in it near the top, and the loose thread was caught in the zipper’s teeth. Frustrated even more, she yanked on it again, but it didn’t give.

Then she realized why.

The lining wasn’t torn.

It had been cut. A small, carefully opened slice.

She might have never noticed it...

John moved into the bathroom to stand beside her. “What’s wrong?”

She slipped her finger between the lining of the bag. Something small and flat and round was inside. She pulled it out on a gasp.

Her blood ran cold in her veins.

The tiny black disk was a thinner, more compact version of the GPS tracker her pursuers had placed on her car.

13

Duarte’s heart still felt clutched in a vise a few minutes later, as he and Lisa met up with Alec in the empty kitchen of the main house.

“They know she’s here.” Duarte put the GPS tracker down on the white marble countertop, barely resisting the urge to smash it under his fist.

“Holy shit.” Alec’s brows went up in shock. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“My makeup bag. It was hidden inside the lining,” Lisa murmured. She wrapped her arms around herself, looking small and vulnerable—frightened—in her T-shirt and faded jeans. “Now I guess I know what they were doing in my house a week ago. God, I
knew
someone had been inside my home. They traced my car, probably traced my phone, too. Now this...” She trailed off on a small shudder.

Duarte wanted to pull her into his embrace, but he didn’t expect she’d welcome his comfort. They’d left a lot unresolved back in the guest room, and this new emergency meant they would have even less alone time to talk things out and try to patch things up.