Chapter Sixty-Eight
Phoenix
I came for sex.
Leaving my son passed out face down in his bed, I’d driven to the hotel, let myself into the penthouse, and silently went upstairs. Then I’d stripped and gotten in bed with her. On a mission to convince my little trespasser to stay, my plan of action had been straightforward.
Fuck her into submission.
Show the woman what she’d get with me. Then give her emotions and persuade her to stay.
Except I’d made a tactical error and gross miscalculation.
I didn’t fuck my little intruse or account for her acuity.
My son was grieving and lost. I knew she would see it, and I’d have to tread carefully with both of them. But I didn’t think she’d feel it so deeply, it’d increase her predilection to run.
This woman trespassed.
But I’d made the tactical error in assuming it was because she had nowhere to land.
I didn’t realize until tonight that ma petite intruse wasn’t an actual drifter.
She hadn’t been living her lifestyle because she was wandering.
She had run from something. I saw it clearly today when she’d been in the pool.
One mention of Lincoln’s mother, and Isla’s entire demeanor had shifted.
Now she was asleep in my arms, dawn was approaching, and I had to leave.
But fuck, it felt wrong.
As wrong as Lincoln being home without me. Worse, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I was contemplating doing the exact opposite of what I’d promised I’d do with my son.
Meet him on his terms.
Ease Lincoln into my life, fit around his. Get to know him, let him get to know me.
Then bring Isla in.
Except, it hadn’t gone down that way, and now I couldn’t leave her here.
Even if I called Tauk back in, put him on protection detail and told him not to let her out of his sights, I knew she’d find an out.
Same as I’d known that if I’d waited until oh eight hundred, this penthouse would’ve been empty.
Hell, if I left now, she wouldn’t be here come morning.
The logical choice was to give her the option to leave.
But I hadn’t been operating with sound fucking reason since I’d laid eyes on this woman.
Contemplating my next move, I wondered how pissed she’d be if I picked her up and carried her to the SUV.
Simultaneously, I was trying to put myself in Lincoln’s shoes and infer how he’d feel waking up to find Isla at the house, in my bed.
Regardless of whatever appeasing narrative he’d offer, I didn’t want Lincoln to feel less important, slighted, cast aside or anything other than my priority.
Not that Isla wasn’t a priority. I wouldn’t have brought her in if she weren’t, but she was an adult.
Lincoln was not, and I was looking at the dynamic from all angles even though I kept circling back to one fact.
I hadn’t fed Isla a line earlier. This wasn’t about my world.
The life I’d been living ended the second I got a text from a motherless teen who had my eyes. From that moment forward, I’d fought to get Lincoln here. I’d also fought to get a little trespasser this far. I fought, period. I was a warfighter, and warfighters never quit.
Which meant my decision was made.
Isla was coming home with me.
Grabbing my cell from the nightstand, I was about to text Cypher with a sitrep and have him cancel the standing reservation for the penthouse suite, but I didn’t get that far. The phone vibrated with an incoming call from him.
Swiping to answer, I issued a quiet command. “Wait.” Pulling my arm out from under my intruse, I swung a leg off the bed, and she stirred.
Glancing up, her gaze cut from the cell to me, then worry threaded through her tone. “Is it Linc?”
“No.” Getting out of bed, I pulled on my jeans and stepped into my trainers.
“If it’s one of the asshole brothers, don’t tell them I said hi.” She sank back into the pillows, and her voice became muffled. “Although, Ares isn’t really an asshole. He’s just quiet. You can tell him I said hi.”
“Not Helios or Ares.” I kissed her temple, then grabbed my T-shirt off the floor and threw it on. “How do you know they’re brothers?” They didn’t advertise that fact.
She picked her head back up. “Have you looked at them?”
“Fair point.” Shoving my Sig into my back waistband, then pocketing my keys, I held the cell to my ear and spoke to Cypher. “Five more seconds.”
“No seconds,” Isla replied, her eyes already closed as she mistook my command for one that was directed at her. “I’m going back to sleep, and whoever called in the middle of the night? Rude.”
“It’s Cypher, he works for me, and it’s daytime in half the world. Don’t get too comfortable. We’re relocating in twenty.”
“Oh my God, you have a cryptologist working for you?”
“No.” Not technically. I gave her a condensed, more palatable answer for Cypher’s skill set. “Comms specialist.”
“I take offense to this entire conversation,” Cypher said dryly.
“Great. Special communicate away. I’m still not getting up.” Hugging my pillow, she curled into a fetal position.
“Twenty minutes,” I reiterated to my little intruse before exfilling the bedroom and hitting the stairs. “Cypher, go.”
“You’re not gonna like this.”
Immediately on alert, I scanned the first floor of the suite. “Is Lincoln okay?”
“If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have waited on standby while you downloaded our entire operation to your trespassing girlfriend.”
“Watch it,” I warned.
“I am. Which is why I’m calling at oh four hundred.” Cypher typed for a second. “Isla Sennan’s brother. I have an ID.”
Cypher said his name.
Although I’d suspected all along, I still paused. “Bad copy. Repeat.” The pieces fell into order—the covered-up drowning, France, the entry in her journal, the complete background wipe—but something wasn’t adding up.
“Connection’s clear. You heard me, but you’ve got a bigger problem,” Cypher warned. “Dark web chatter says he’s on the hunt—domestically—and aiming for a dead man. That’s you.”
“Not necessarily. We both know how the latter’s interpreted.
Anyone in the sights of a Tier One is considered a dead man.
As far as domestically, that doesn’t automatically indicate I’m the target.
” And Cypher was wrong about my biggest problem.
Isla’s brother’s proclamation from when he was a SEAL was my biggest problem.
More specifically, the detailed carnage Cypher had outlined.
Second-hand intel or not, I wasn’t going to take chances.
“Disagree. Add the two details together, stack them against the fact that he’s been wiping his digital footprint in real time while simultaneously replacing it with non-AI subjects, and you don’t only have a problem.
You have a potentially catastrophic loss on your hands.
I can’t even find who the hell he’s working for, if he works for someone, let alone where his loyalties lie, because that same dark web chatter says he’s not for hire, doesn’t pick up commissions, and has been known to go full scorched-earth.
Lose the trespasser, Nix,” Cypher reiterated.
“It’s not about her.” It was, but maybe not how Cypher thought.
“You can’t confirm that.”
“I would already be dead. You watched the security footage from the estate in Cap d’Antibes. He’d had me in his sights.” Literally.
“I saw an obstructed shot, a kneeling trespasser, Helios getting the drop on the sniper, then a firefight that played out over five terraces with heavy vegetation. What I didn’t see was an easy kill shot.”
“He had the shot.”
“Cut ties, Nix. Put distance between your house and the woman. Everything you went through to get your son isn’t worth this.”
I didn’t operate with emotion. It’d been drilled out of me so damn long ago, I didn’t think resurrection was possible. Then I’d gotten a text. A few weeks later, I watched a trespasser kneel. Two separate, unrelated incidents. Same result.
Emotion.
Now my head was fucking full of it, and a former SEAL turned hunter who wasn’t for hire, operated completely off grid, and had no discernible agenda besides an old proclamation was after me.
My decision was already made.
“Bring in Chaos, then contact Judas and Saint,” I ordered Cypher. “Isla’s coming to the main house. I want increased security. Round-the-clock rotating shifts, perimeter patrol, stealth mode. No one’s seen coming or going. They set up camp in the guesthouse.”
“Nix—”
“Make it happen.” I was going to find out exactly what my little trespasser’s brother was up to.
“Fine, but going on record to say, this is your worst idea to date.” Cypher started typing again. “Contacting Chaos now. Ares is in the vicinity. Escort back to the house?”
“Negative.” If this was about her brother’s proclamation when he was a SEAL, then I was going to give him this one opportunity to come at me while it was only me and her here, and Lincoln was safe at home.
“Chaos is en route to the house. ETA thirty minutes.”
“Good copy. Exfilling hotel now. Cancel the standing reservation.” Hanging up, I grabbed the few belongings she’d left around the suite and shoved them into her pack.
Then I took the stairs up to the bedroom.