Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Alex followed Diana home, her taillights a comforting red glow as they drove back to Sutton’s Creek. The parking lot was crowded tonight but he found a spot and joined her at the door to the Sutton building. She looked small and vulnerable in the bright light shining onto the stoop from overhead.
Or maybe he was the one feeling vulnerable after everything that’d happened today. When he’d thought he caught a glimpse of her moving through the crowd and followed her to the parked cars, he hadn’t expected to find her about to be attacked by four small-minded men with revenge on the brain.
He hadn’t expected to fight for her, or to kiss her, or to claim she was his in front of witnesses. But he had, and now he had to deal with the fallout.
But at least she was safe, and they were here, and he wasn’t leaving until he got her upstairs and found out what the utter fuck she’d been doing at the farm today. She’d nearly ruined everything by bumbling in, and he still wasn’t over it.
She didn’t speak when he joined her. A sure sign she was fighting her own tangled emotions.
She simply turned and inserted her key in the lock.
He followed her inside, checking that the door locked automatically behind them, and then trailed her up the stairs until she stopped at her apartment on the third floor and unlocked it.
They went inside—he shut the door and shot the bolt—and she set her purse on the kitchen island before throwing him a look. “Anything to drink?” Her voice was like snow—cold and light.
“No. Thanks.”
Her apartment—formerly Daphne’s apartment—was sparsely decorated. A tower of boxes sat in one corner of the living room. Not enough to fill the space once emptied. Unless she’d stashed the rest in one of the bedrooms. Surely a rich girl like her had more belongings.
She opened the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine, poured some in a glass, and put the bottle back.
Then she toed off her boots and walked over to the couch to sink onto it with a sigh.
She took a Faraday bag from the side table and dropped her phone in it, then held it out to him.
He dropped his inside and she closed it before setting it on the table.
She reached over and flipped on a white noise machine. He was impressed. It didn’t turn the space into a SCIF, not even close, but they could talk around topics without having to go to the range and duck inside the secure space there.
“Well, are you going to tell me what I want to know?” she asked, fixing him with an expectant look. “Or was that a lie to get me to do what you wanted?”
He hadn’t exactly lied, but he didn’t intend to tell her everything either. It was safer that way.
“How about you tell me what you were doing there first.” He joined her on the couch, because it was the only piece of seating she had, taking the opposite end and leaning into the corner to watch her.
She swigged wine, swallowed. Her eyes flashed. “Think I did plenty of compromising earlier when I let you order me around like your servant girl.”
He supposed he should feel guilty, but he didn’t.
Still, he’d give her this much. She’d been remarkably cooperative when he’d asked for it.
She could have refused. He expected they would have both walked away from that field with their lives, but he didn’t think they’d have been invited back.
And he needed to go back, find out what those fuckers plans were.
The two men he’d met were European, military men, much slicker than most of the people there today.
They had an agenda, but they were subtle.
It’d been a risk, meeting them, but he’d had to do it.
They hadn’t shown even a flicker of recognition at his name.
Didn’t mean they didn’t know who he was, though.
He hadn’t hidden his special operator background from Gannon.
If Dashevsky’s people had gotten his team’s records from McCann, then it did no good to lie.
Better to be open—in the cagey way of special operators—and let them draw their own conclusions.
“Okay, you did. Guess I’ll go first,” he added with a grin. She didn’t even crack a smile. So much for charming her into compliance. “You said you read my record. You know what happened when Mendez had to flee the country and we were ordered to stand down.”
She nodded. “Yes. You didn’t. You took a core group of operators and ran a mission to clear him.”
“I don’t do well being told not to act.” It was an understatement.
The part of him that would always hate what his father had done to their family was incapable of inaction.
Not after what’d happened in Alaska. He didn’t sit quietly and play with his toys while others told him everything would be fine.
He didn’t trust others to keep their word.
Not when the lives of those he cared about were at stake.
He’d lost people because of inaction. Wasn’t ever happening again.
“Are you saying you’ve been told to stand down?” she asked, her brow furrowing.
“No, I’m not saying that. I’ve been told nothing of the sort. In fact, I’ve been told nothing. I’d hardly say the powers that be don’t care anymore, but I think they’ve got a lot on their plate. And maybe they’re wavering with the pushback they’re getting lately.”
She frowned. Sipped more wine. “I’ve been tracking that. Somebody leaked its existence. It’s the only explanation for why it’s suddenly everywhere.”
“Agreed.” He suspected the president and her people might be considering delaying the completion of the project.
Or maybe they’d scrap it entirely. There were certainly those in government who’d been calling for it to happen.
They said Athena was too expensive and couldn’t possibly work the way it was intended.
They’d whipped up anti-war sentiment among the public, and now people were crying for government accountability.
It was the usual Washington bullshit, different day.
“But you don’t intend to wait for someone to tell you what to do.”
He liked that he didn’t have to spell it out for her. The woman might annoy the shit out of him, but she was no dummy. Even if she sometimes made stupid decisions.
“No. We know this movement is tied to Viktor, and we know his people were involved with Callie. Or so I suspect since you didn’t actually confirm who broke into her house.”
“That’s what I think, but I didn’t have enough information. Smirnov was masquerading as Mikhail, and we know he worked for Viktor. Unfortunately, since we traded him back to the Russians and never heard from again, we can’t ask any further questions.”
They both knew what’d happened to Smirnov. Anyone who double-crossed the Russian intelligence service the way Smirnov had wasn’t long for this world if they got their hands on him. Smirnov was probably wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of the Black Sea.
“If it wasn’t Smirnov who busted in and tore the place up, it was somebody from the militia.
Maybe they thought she’d have a fucking notebook with what they wanted to know, or maybe they were just having fun.
Smirnov wasn’t delivering what he’d promised, so somebody in the organization could have decided to go after Callie’s place as a warning.
Maybe it wasn’t even meant for her—could have been meant for him since they knew he was likely watching her.
” He shoved a hand through his hair. “These are theories, none of them particularly a favorite. But it all comes back to the militia.”
She nodded. He could see she was processing it. She drew her knees up to her chest, one arm around her legs, the other holding her wine glass, and frowned. She looked less polished than usual, more defenseless. His protective instincts twitched. “How did you manage to get invited?”
“Told you, I speak the language.” He hesitated, let the words stew inside him. “My dad was a separatist and a prepper. Mostly, he was a paranoid son of a bitch, but he was involved in this kind of bullshit for a while before he lost what was left of his mind and took us to Alaska.”
He didn’t know why he’d told her about Alaska, but it was out there now.
Not the horror of living remotely, surrounded by ice and snow and wild animals, never knowing if he’d escape.
He didn’t say it because nobody who hadn’t lived it could understand.
Especially not someone who’d been born into generational wealth and influence.
He thought of the day she’d told him she had her own mission—the passion and pain in her expression, the raw emotion in her voice—but whatever had happened to her, he didn’t think she could comprehend the horrors of his childhood.
She didn’t offer any bullshit platitudes or express sorrow he didn’t want to hear, and he appreciated that about her.
“I started drinking at the brewery,” he continued, “made contact, and told him what he wanted to hear. Doesn’t hurt we’re both military men, both colonels.
That’s another language we have in common.
I may have suggested I was forced out, too.
” He shrugged. “The short version is that I got myself invited to their meet up, and I made contact with a couple people in the hierarchy.”
“Yes, and you certainly made sure I didn’t get to talk to them when you made me wait with your food.”
“They wouldn’t have talked if you’d been there. Besides, you already drew enough attention between Gannon and those fucknuts from the Dawg. I didn’t want to be distracted by the need to protect you if anything went wrong.”
Color flared in her cheeks. “You do realize that I didn’t set out to draw anyone’s attention, right? It happens because men think with their dicks too much.”
“As a man, I can confirm. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or that there weren’t other kinds of danger out there. I couldn’t take the risk, Diana. I needed you safely away when I made contact.”
She bared her teeth. “I’m going to pretend that’s sweet of you instead of pointing out how very patronizing it is to think I can’t defend myself—not against four men in an ambush, not saying that, but in general. Did you learn anything useful from them?”
“Not yet. They wanted to meet me, talk about my background.” Men in particular were always interested in knowing what kinds of things he’d done.
He was vague, always, because it wasn’t a fucking role-playing game, and he wasn’t their entertainment.
But these guys wanted to know if they could use him, which meant he had to be a bit more forthcoming if he wanted to go deeper.
“It’s possible I won’t get any farther than this.
There are reasons, but I’ll have to talk about those another time. ”
He wasn’t going to talk openly about the breach, or that Trey McCann had said there were powerful people who knew their names before Ethan put a hole in him.
She nodded and he knew she understood it was something requiring a more secure location. “Then we need to make that happen.”
“I’ve told you what you wanted to know. Think it’s your turn now. Why were you there, Diana?”
She dropped her gaze to her wine glass, her body vibrating with emotion. Anger? Or fear?
Could be the adrenaline rush of having survived today finally catching up with her. He waited, determined not to let her off the hook.
“Because I need to know,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t care how often I’m told to leave it alone, or who orders me to move on—I can’t.”
Her eyes collided with his. The emotion boiling in their depths stunned him. It was the most feeling he’d ever seen her display. Even beyond the day she’d accused him of having her removed from the case a second time.
This Diana was alive, a raging tempest of emotion. Fucking beautiful. So arresting that his chest ached with the urge to touch her.
“It’s personal,” she grated. “But I won’t stop until that bastard is finished.”