Chapter Six Ryder
Chapter Six
Ryder
Washington, DC; three days later
I stared at the text thread with Alex and Reed. So much for celebratory drinking, which was our norm after an op ended.
My team had turned over the target package to DHS at the Pentagon today after extracting the intel needed from the asshole guest at Ezra’s party. Now active-duty Tier One operators could be dispatched to take out the terrorist cell. Mission success.
Me: Really letting me drink alone, the both of ya, huh?
Reed: The city is too crowded. There’s a parade or something. I need to be armed to be around a clusterfuck of people. Staying at my hotel. Sorry.
Alex: I was on my way, man, but I bumped into Beth in the lobby. Ironically, staying at the same hotel as us. You know I can never say no to her, and she wants to talk.
Reed: Sure that’s what she wants to do.
Me: She fucks with your head every time you see her.
Alex: Don’t Freud me. That’s my job.
Me: I hate you both for bailing.
Reed: You’ll forgive me after I find something on your mystery woman.
Me: Don’t stop until you do. I’ll head back soon.
Me: And, Alex, don’t let Beth get into your head. I’m serious. Don’t . That’s an order.
Alex: Roger that.
I closed out the group text, ignoring the fact my ex’s name was below it with eight unopened messages. I had no plans to read any of them. Not enough scotch in the world for that.
I deleted the unopened Fuck You one from Leo beneath her name.
I didn’t need to see what else was written after those inspiring words.
He was pissed that we’d gone around him to the director before he could try to throw us under the bus.
As far as I was concerned, he was yesterday’s news, just the way Beth needed to be for Alex.
I pocketed my phone and hung my head. I hunched forward, sitting there alone with my scotch, my posture slacking. There was a lot on my shoulders, like the fact I’d yet to find the woman in red or learn her real name. Anna , which I’d pulled from Ezra’s work records, was sure as hell not it.
Her digital footprint left something to be desired, as in it was fake. I was probably one of a few who’d be able to detect that bit of truth. Clearly, Ezra’s background check before hiring her nine months and now fifteen days ago hadn’t produced any red flags.
Something or someone had to have tipped him off that she wasn’t Anna on Saturday night to make him upset enough that he wanted to kill her.
All that protected him from being skewered alive by me was her text request to not do so.
But why couldn’t I kill him? I knew that answer as much as I knew why she’d faked her name and identity to work for him in the first place.
Nothing added up, and I’d been trying to do exactly that—piece the story together. I had Reed hack into Ezra’s home-security cameras, which proved to be a waste of time. Ezra must’ve realized he’d been breached and destroyed the footage.
Since our pictures weren’t floating around online with kill orders, I’d successfully ducked the cameras while at Ezra’s party. So at least we didn’t have that problem hanging over our heads. Just the problem of finding the woman who’d cut and run, leaving a dull, achy pain in my chest.
I’d resorted to digging into Ezra’s background as much as possible as a way to get to the truth about her, hoping I’d be able to figure out how she got mixed up with the likes of that asshole.
All I presently knew was that Ezra hadn’t outsourced help to find her, or I’d have heard about it.
I made sure Reed kept his finger on the pulse of underground activity to see if a hit had been placed on her.
“I’ll take the check, please.” Time to head back to my hotel room and focus on trying to track down a woman who didn’t want to be found.
And if Anna was hard for me to find, she’d be even harder for anyone else to locate.
Maybe if I had her real name and something meaningful to connect her to, that’d change things.
The only thing keeping me semi-sane was that I didn’t think Ezra knew her real name, either. I had an old friend in Florida keeping tabs on Ezra and his movements just in case.
“Ryder Lawson, that you?”
I paid the bill and stood to face whoever had recognized me. Hudson Ashford was there, alongside another guy. “Hey, man. Been a minute.”
Hudson went in for a quick one-armed hug. “I thought you moved. You back?”
“I’m not back, no.” Fuck that. I’d never live here again after what went down with Lainey. “Here on business. What about you?”
“For work as well. I live in New York, but I rolled out a new project this year, and it’s been bringing me to DC a lot lately.” Hudson gestured to the guy at his left, who had an Italian Mafia look going for him. “He was army like you.”
“A long time ago,” the man responded, and I was right: There was a hint of Italian there that couldn’t be missed. I’d become pretty damn good at keying in on accents and foreign languages through my time spent serving all over the world.
“Wouldn’t have pegged you for army.” I smirked, accepting the man’s hand. “I thought you team guys ran in packs, only with Seal s.”
“You mean when they’re not busy writing books?” His buddy confirmed he bled army with that jab.
The Seal s had become a bunch of writers ever since they took down Bin Laden. You’d be hard-pressed to find much about Delta Force in a book or online.
“I’m Enzo Costa, this guy’s brother-in-law.”
Shock powered my hand back to my side. “You’re married?” I hadn’t seen Hudson in years. He’d left the military long before I did, but our paths had crossed here and there. His father was also the governor of New York, from what I remembered. Somehow I’d missed the news he was now hitched.
“I know, it came as a surprise to me as well.” Hudson smiled, eyeing my naked ring finger. “How about you?”
I removed the shades hooked at the front of my shirt.
“Very single. Like single-fucking-single.” Chills hit my back.
I turned and followed the eerie feeling with my eyes as it guided me to the bar’s entrance.
Of all times. Not the woman in red, but a woman who hadn’t gotten the message after I’d sent her calls to voicemail and ignored her texts.
Lainey waved me over with a slight nod.
I turned to face Hudson and Enzo. “I’m being summoned. I’ve gotta bounce.”
“That woman has government or girlfriend written all over her, I can’t tell which,” Enzo commented. The man was a good read of people.
“Sort of both.” I shook my head. “Ex, though.” Important clarification.
“Well, good luck with that.” Hudson slapped a hand over my shoulder and patted twice. “Good to see you. If you’re ever in Manhattan, look me up. I’m working on something you might be interested in.”
“Oh yeah?” I checked the door, finding Lainey gone. Waiting for me to be a good soldier, follow orders, and step outside, more than likely. Some things never changed. “And that is?”
Hudson looked around the packed bar, probably not interested in discussing his new project in the presence of others, even if the place was a vet hot spot. “Let’s just say we’re hoping to curb the flow of a certain something from entering our country.”
Drug trafficking it is. And that brought me back to thoughts of Ezra and my belief that he was a trafficker.
At this point, I knew more about that man than I wanted to. Like what time he got home on both Sunday and Monday nights. When he’d left his house today. Who he’d met up with for lunch in Miami three hours ago. Hell, I was on the verge of knowing when the man took a dump.
But maybe Hudson could assist in ... what ? Committing murder? That was where my head kept going, at least. Eliminate the threat to my woman in red so she could get her life back. “I’ll be in touch, then.”
We said our goodbyes, and they headed for a table, meeting up with a few others, and I went outside in search of a problem I was in no mood to deal with.
Lainey was in the back seat of a black Suburban, waiting for me with the door open. “Get in.”
I rolled my eyes before hiding them with my sunglasses. I got inside and pulled the door shut, and she ordered her man up front to drive. The privacy divider lifted, and she turned in her seat to face me. I zeroed in on the file on her lap.
A new mission, from her? Was she out of her mind? I wasn’t going to accept assignments from anyone until I knew Anna was safe.
“Did you track my phone?” I stared at her, unable to detect any signs of her pregnancy yet.
She looked the same as she did when we went our separate ways after selling the house we co-owned in Arlington.
All my things were still in a storage unit; I was currently a man without a home, drifting around between missions. Hotels had become my sanctuaries.
“I did, but that was because you weren’t answering me.
I tried to catch you before you left the Pentagon, but I’m pretty sure you learned some of Alex’s Houdini skills and disappeared on me.
” She leaned back in her seat, her brown hair pin straight, resting just above her shoulders in her blue blazer.
The woman was classy and beautiful, but now that I’d met Anna—who was an I’d-kill-anyone-just-to-share-the-same-air-as-her kind of gorgeous—well, she paled in comparison.
“And yet, you didn’t take the hint and came looking anyway.” I punctuated my words with venom. I clearly hadn’t forgiven her for what she’d done. The wounds were only three and a half days old, after all.
“We agreed we’d be friends. That one day we’d be able to work together again. Well, that one day is now.” She nudged the folder at me, but I didn’t take it.