Authors: Christina Moore
Gabe chuckled. “I know you think he’s a dick—and I agree, wholeheartedly—but even I don’t want to kill him.”
“They don’t know, Gabe.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand. Who doesn’t know what?”
“Eddie’s family. They don’t know he’s been killed, Thunderhead,” she said slowly, watching a dark cloud of fury fill his expression at her words.
“Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.”
Billie nodded. “I know. You can imagine my shock when 1st Lt. Stevens—who must get her looks from their mom, because she looks nothing like Wildchild—not only introduced herself to me as his sister, which I’d sadly forgotten he had one it’s been so long since I’ve seen the kid, but asked me if I’d heard from Eddie recently because she hadn’t.”
“You probably forgot about Becky because you didn’t hang with us as much as you used to on downtime after you bugged out for the spook squad,” Gabe muttered absently as he turned away from her.
Sighing heavily, she slumped against the back of the bench. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
He looked back at her. “What have you got to be sorry for? It’s that dumbfuck Wainright that should be sorry. How the hell can he justify not notifying next of kin?”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you guys this last year. I’m sorry I’ve been so disconnected from everyone. Maybe if I’d been here—”
Gabe’s hand found hers and gave it a gentle squeeze, his face as he looked at her devoid of the anger of a moment ago. In its place was love and compassion. “None of us knows how we’re going to react to losing someone who means the world to us, Billie,” he said softly. “I don’t know where you’re been, mentally or physically, but it doesn’t matter because you’re home now. Don’t blame yourself for the mess the guys and I have gotten ourselves into.”
“If I’d been here, I could have kicked some sense into your asses,” Billie said.
Grinning, Gabe squeezed her hand again and then released it. “That you probably would have,” he conceded. “But seriously, don’t put any of this on you. We made our bunks, now we have to sleep in them.”
He pushed to his feet then and paced back and forth in front of the bench. “This business with Wainright not telling Eddie’s family that their son and brother is dead… That’s bullshit. There’s no sense in it—what’s the point of keeping it from them? It’s not like he can keep it under wraps indefinitely.”
“That’s it!” Billie crie
d, jumping to her feet with renewed vigor. “Something about this whole situation has been bugging me from the start. Something I could never put my finger on. But that has to be it—Wainright hasn’t told Eddie’s family because he’s hiding something.”
“Of course he’s hiding something—the way he died. He doesn’t want it to get out,” Gabe suggested.
Shaking her head, Billie now began to pace, a finger tapping her chin as she walked. “No, it’s not just that. Eddie’s death could easily be attributed to a training accident if he just wanted to cover up why he was shot,” she said. “There’s something else going on here. Something Wainright doesn’t want anyone to know about.”
“You know, you could be right,” Gabe said after a moment. “I guess IQ-56 didn’t work on me. I don’t feel any smarter than I did before.”
“Just as long as you don’t feel any dumber, Thunderhead,” Billie replied.
“Only for saying yes to begin with, She-Devil,” he returned.
By mute agreement, they began walking along the path again. For a long moment they were silent, each occupied with their own thoughts as they looked around at the demonstrations of life in 18
th
century Virginia.
Gabe sighed. “What are we going to do, Billie?”
“First things first: You guys have to come in. Not necessarily to Bolling,” she added quickly when he looked about to protest. “But if you’re truly worried about IQ-56 doing to you what you believe it did to Eddie, then you all need to be under round-the-clock medical surveillance. Even you have to agree that’s the safest option.”
His responding nod was clearly reluctant. “I know,” he said. “I don’t like feeling like a damn bomb on a timer, waiting to go off on the unsuspecting public. So in the interests of public safety, yeah—we gotta come in. But if you’re right and the general is up to something shady, then in the interests of the team’s safety, I don’t want it to be anywhere near him.”
“I don’t either,” Billie agreed. “I need some time to come up with a plan. Go ahead and go back to wherever it is you’ve been hiding out during the day—and no, I’m not going to ask you where.”
“Of course not. You have to maintain plausible deniability if this goes south. Even if you did ask, I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t put you at risk like that,” Gabe said.
Billie looked up at her friend and smiled. “I know you wouldn’t. If you come by the house again tonight, I should have something for you. Hell, I might even save you a steak.”
“Oh, I’m there. You sure know the way to a man’s heart, Billie Ryan,” Gabe said with a grin.
“I know that the quickest way to a man’s heart is a knife between the third and fourth rib,” she countered with a nonchalant shrug.
Gabe laughed. “Such sweet and
deadly words from such a cleverly disguised—and dangerous—package.”
“I aim to please,” Billie said with a grin. “I’d better go before my CIA shadow puts the local LEOs on my tail.”
An image of her and John in his bed flashed before her mind’s eye and she forcibly dismissed it. Forced herself to put aside the mixed feelings of warmth and guilt that accompanied it.
It’s for his own good
, she reminded herself.
“What have you got a shadow for?” Gabe asked.
“The general apparently couldn’t find me on his own. He had to go to the CIA for help in tracking me down,” she replied. “And even my former colleagues didn’t have it easy.”
“You always did know how to play hard to get, She-Devil.”
He had stopped walking by then. Billie kept going but turned around to face him, walking backward as she said, “When a woman is hard to find, Thunderhead, it’s probably because she doesn’t want to be found.”
With that, she turned again and disappeared into the crowd.
Locating a mis
sing woman (who wasn’t really missing) without raising any flags was a pain in the ass. He’d placed several calls to known associates, as well as her father and brothers…and gotten nowhere. Friends hadn’t seen her—had no idea she was even in town—and her family hadn’t set eyes on her since last night or that morning. No, he assured the latter, there was nothing wrong. They had merely separated to explore different avenues of investigation, but Billie had neglected to leave a number at which she could be reached.
John hated having to lie to the Ryans, but he’d had no choice.
He needed to see her. Not because he wanted her body again, although that was certainly true. In spite of her rejection, despite his every effort to forget he could still taste her mouth on his tongue—could still feel the tight, slick walls of her womanhood around his cock as he buried himself deep inside her.
The memory was making him hard even now, damn his traitorous body to hell. He didn’t want or need to be thinking about what it had been like making love to Billie. She didn’t want him anymore—she’d made that abundantly clear. He’d been little more than a distraction, a means to scratch an itch.
He’d been a fool. Whatever he thought he’d seen in her eyes back in St. Thomas had been a figment of his imagination.
Looking at the display on his new cell phone again, which he’d been forced to purchase no thanks to Andre Sardetsky, he saw that it was after six. John looked up at her father’s house and wondered where in the hell Billie was for the umpteenth time. Where had she gone? What had she been doing?
Was she safe?
That last thought was another one that had put him on edge
, and had led to his sitting in front of Thomas Ryan’s house like he was on a damn stakeout. Surely she hadn’t forgotten the two attempts on her life by a Russian hit squad? Certainly they’d been poor attempts given she was still alive, but the fact that the Sardetskys had a contract out on her meant they’d keep trying until they succeeded. Billie was in danger every minute she was exposed.
And every minute that went by and he didn’t see her, his concern for her increased tenfold.
At 6:23 p.m., a taxi cab rolled up to the curb in front of the Ryan address. Relief flooded through him to see Billie sitting alive and well in the back seat. Annoyance quickly followed, and as soon as she’d exited the vehicle and paid her fare, he pushed the door to the Charger open.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded as he slapped his car door shut behind him.
Billie looked up as the cab drove away, a scowl descending on her features. “Since when do I have to answer to you, Agent Courtney?” she asked.
“Since a fucking Russian hit squad tried to kill us
both—
twice
,” John replied hotly as he crossed the street…at the same time that one of her brothers happened to open the front door.
“Billie, what is he talking about?”
She whirled to face the newcomer, who was joined by a younger version of himself on the front stoop. “Andy, it’s nothing,” she said, looking over her shoulder to glare at him.
John narrowed his eyes in response before turning his attention to the two men now stalking toward them down the front walk. “Sure as hell didn’t sound like ‘nothing’ to me,” Andy said, a frown on his face. “What did he mean about a Russian hit squad?”
“Trust me, Andy, its better you don’t know,” Billie said in a vain attempt to deflect his concern.
“Bullshit,” said both brothers at the same time.
The younger one looked to John, then back at Billie. “Either you tell us or we get it out of him.”
John’s forehead creased with mild surprise, but he didn’t protest the claim. If Billie refused to discuss the matter with her brothers and one of them asked him directly what had happened, he would tell them. He was not bound by whatever code of silence she was apparently operating under. Her family deserved to know—after all, with Andre Sardetsky and his team still out there, there was every possibility they were in danger as well, simply by being related to her.
Billie growled and shot him another angry look, at which he shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. Looking back to her brothers she said, “Down in St. Thomas, this Russian gangster whose organization I’ve dealt with before tried—and failed, I might remind you, as is obvious by the fact I’m standing here talking to you—to kill me. They tried to kill Agent Courtney as well, and did in fact kill a friend of mine and a teenage girl.”
“Jesus Christ, Billie!” hissed the brother whose voice he now recognized as Kevin Ryan’s. “How the hell can you stand there and talk about some thug trying to kill you, about his killing two innocent people, so fucking calmly? Like it’s nothing more than an item to check off your to-do list?”
“Because I know how to compartmentalize what’s worth worrying about and what isn’t, Kevin, not to mention what’s worth freaking Dad out about and what is not,” she seethed in return.
Andy and Kevin looked at one another, then back at their sister. “You’re right,” Andy said. “Dad doesn’t need to know. You’ve worried him enough the last year—though perhaps you didn’t notice how much more gray hair he’s got since the last time you saw him.”
John watched a crestfallen expression pass over her face. Billie looked down at her feet for a moment, before looking back up at her brother with her previous mask of calm back in place. “I noticed,” she said simply. “I don’t need you, or anyone else, to remind me that I made you all worry about me. I’ve got enough to feel guilty about as it is.”
Curiosity shot through him, but he wasn’t about to ask what she meant. He had to remind himself that he didn’t care anymore. Again.
Kevin’s expression brightened then, and it was as though his ire of moments before had been forgotten as he grinned hugely and said, “You’re just in time. Dad’s just put the steaks on the grill. Brats are set to go on in five.”
“I hope you have plenty,” Billie said.
“Teddy called to whine about how he couldn’t make it,” Kevin told her, his grin growing wider.
“At which time he volunteered to go with me later to take the guys a few dozen brats,” Andy added.
Kevin shook his head. “No, I volunteered
you
, big brother.”
“And I just returned the favor, kid brother,” Andy replied.
Out of the corner of his eye, John caught Billie grinning. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters himself, so he didn’t know what it was like to feel that kind of joy in simply watching your siblings bait each other. He was glad she got a kick out of it. It reminded him, much to his dismay, that there
was
a softer side to her. A caring side—he saw on her face a degree of the same tenderness she had shown him in his apartment when they’d been in his bed together.
So where the hell had it gone just a few hours later?
Caught up in his musings, he’d missed Andy and Kevin turning back for the house. Billie turned to him then and said, “Believe it or not, I’m actually glad you’re here. I need your help.”