Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
BARCELONA, SPAIN - PRESENT DAY
“This shit they’re saying is making me sick.” Finn clutched his phone and swiped angrily at the screen.
“Then maybe get off Twitter.” Roman cupped the back of his head while he paced around his bedroom.
Knox was still in surgery, and although the team said the sniper had only clipped him in the shoulder, the fact their brother had been shot at all didn’t make it easy to sit, to stand, to do much of anything but wear down the floors.
“#SecretServiceFailure,” Finn grumbled. “#WhatDoesThePresident’sSonReallyDoForWork? #WillCharlieBennetSurvive?”
“No more,” Roman seethed, then stopped walking and held his hands between them in apology. “Sorry. On edge.” Aren’t we all, though?
Finn tucked his phone in his side pocket and eyed the closed door before looking back at Roman, who’d resumed pacing between the bed and the window.
“He’s going to be okay. But his Secret Service detail was useless.
Maybe now POTUS will back off and let Knox drop the detail like he’s wanted to.
Not that they could have predicted a shot taken from two miles away.
” Finn dropped onto the side of the bed and leaned forward, setting his elbows to his thighs.
“Bravo feels like shit about it, too. I know I do.”
Bravo Team had been ordered to stand down in their hunt for the hitman. To let Secret Service, the FBI, and Mossad handle the assassination attempt. And that made Roman uneasy. His people were the best chance they had at finding whoever tried to kill Knox.
“Liam needs to slip away from the eyes of Secret Service and get to the shooter’s location.
Mossad caught on surveillance a man with a bag outfitted for a rifle fleeing a tower two miles away from Bravo Team’s location thirty seconds after the shot,” Roman spoke aloud, his words rushed.
Like Wyatt, Liam was one of the best snipers in the world.
“He can figure out the type of rifle used and determine the kind of experience needed to narrow down our list of who could have pulled off that shot.”
“Well, within a few hours, there will be a dozen Feds and additional Secret Service detail there preventing them from taking a piss without someone watching.”
That was the last thing their teams needed. To have eyes on them. Asher said reporters swarmed the hospital like seagulls searching for their next meal at the beach. Now there’d be far too many agents for Bravo to operate under the radar.
Roman stopped in front of the window overlooking the city and set a hand to the glass. He’d loved this city until his uncle and father crushed him with the truth. Now, this was the last place he wanted to be.
With Knox being shot two hours ago, he’d nearly forgotten his own drama with his uncle. But he couldn’t forget the potential danger Harper was in, including from his uncle, no matter the distractions.
Do you really think your father was some schoolboy saint before he ran away with your mother? You don’t think he has blood on his hands, too? Luciano had whispered into his ear the day Roman had dared to resist his uncle’s proposal in 2019 that he move to Spain and take Thiago’s place.
I don’t want your dirty money. Or your power. I want nothing to do with you, Roman had protested. I’ll never do what you want.
It’s your life or the lives of your sisters.
Your mother. Your friends. Or perhaps the pretty blonde and brunette you work with.
And if you don’t think I can hurt them, just test me, and you’ll see.
The decision is yours, the son of a bitch had said in his office that night before three guards had to wrestle Roman to the ground and put a gun to his head.
He’d nearly killed his uncle then and there.
Luciano gave new meaning to the phrase, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, which Roman hated since he loved wolves. But he had to find a way to protect them before the evil of his uncle swallowed them all whole.
“I hate to say it, but maybe we bow out and let the Feds do their thing.” Finn’s words ripped Roman back to the current problem at hand, and he spun around to face him.
“I mean, what choice do we have? The guys can’t operate in Tel Aviv without Mossad knowing.
Knox will be out of surgery soon, and you know POTUS is going to ground Bravo Team until he figures out how in the hell his son was shot in Israel and why. ”
Roman worked through his thoughts, trying to get a grip. To focus. Not let his personal problems bleed into the op, even though his uncle had already managed to set himself in the middle of it all by chasing down the Mauricio lead.
“You think Knox getting shot was the plan all along? That the chatter the CIA picked up was about an assassination attempt and not a terrorist attack? Knox has been getting threats ever since his dad took office. Maybe someone has been keeping tabs on our work with Scott and Scott as a way to get to him. Tracking our movements.”
Finn smoothed a hand over his beard as he processed Roman’s idea.
The rest of the team was in the living room still at work, but Roman had disappeared into his room when he’d started to spin out with worry.
He’d planned to punch a few walls—they were Riviera walls, after all, so he didn’t care.
But Finn, like a good friend, followed him and prevented him from damaging his fists.
“You think it’s possible Ezra, in his time away from the CIA, was radicalized?
He was half-Palestinian, and Knox’s dad is pretty vocal about peace between Israel and Palestine.
Perhaps he used his past with Harper to draw us out to get to Knox.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one that was stalked.
Maybe he had us all followed to learn our habits, and he even chose Spain because of your ties here. ”
“And he threw us off by only sharing footage of Harper.” Maybe.
“Could be some kind of weird game.”
Roman set his hands to his hips, ignoring his pain for now. “False leads that were all staged to distract us and get Knox exactly where they wanted him.”
“Since the police can’t ID the remains from the car explosion, it’s possible Mauricio blew up someone else in that car the other night. Hell, maybe Ezra wasn’t kidnapped at all, maybe he forced Mauricio to commit the crime,” Finn proposed.
Roman’s shoulders slumped. It felt almost too easy to piece together. And in their work, it was rarely that simple. “If Ezra is alive, and he betrayed Harper like this, he has to be working with others.”
“Hey.” They both turned to find the door open and Wyatt joining them in the room. “Thought you’d want to know Knox is awake and fine. Adriana might go into labor several months early, but Bravo Five is solid.”
Roman shut his eyes with relief. They needed that good news. And they could use some more, too.
“We’ll find the son of a bitch who shot him,” Wyatt added as if Roman had a doubt.
“But?” Roman looked up, feeling as though Wyatt was about to shoot down his hope for more good news.
“Liam and I were talking,” Wyatt said. “One shot. That was it. Why not a second shot? He probably had a spotter, so he could’ve realigned for the kill shot when the first didn’t do the job.”
Wyatt grimaced, but Roman was in agreement, and he wasn’t sure if he should feel better or worse about the fact someone may not have been trying to kill Knox. Because then what?
“He shot Knox from over two miles away and still made contact, not an easy feat. That takes skill. But why not correct and deliver a second round?”
Wyatt was right. The sniper could have adjusted within seconds. That’s what they did in the Navy. It was why they had spotters helping them make that first shot or guiding them to snap out a second if needed before the target knew what hit them.
“It’s possible the guy missed center mass and clipped Knox in the shoulder,” Finn noted. “Maybe he didn’t have a spotter, and he was short on time, so he got the hell out of there afterward. Hell, when Knox went down, the shooter may not have double-checked to make sure he put him down for good.”
“That’s what Secret Service and Mossad believe, but with all of the shit we’ve seen over the years, we can’t assume anything,” Wyatt responded in a grim tone, moving farther into the room.
“But that begs the question, why? Why would anyone want to merely wound the President’s son?” Roman circled the bed to stand next to Finn, which gave him the chance to snag a look at Harper in the living room.
She was at the bar connected to the kitchen area, sitting sideways on the stool while talking with Chris. Her shoulders were hunched a bit more than normal, and she was clutching her necklace.
His stomach squeezed with guilt at the sight.
After all that Harper had learned in the past seventy-two hours, that Roman had lied, that he still kept secrets, that he buried an unknown body, she still wore the necklace he’d given her at Wyatt’s wedding.
It meant that on some level, consciously or not, she clung to a thread of hope that he could be redeemed, that they could be together.
And that’s what wracked him with guilt because he knew it would never happen.
But how would he start that conversation and share his truth now? Their immediate focus needed to be on Knox and why he’d been targeted.
Her eyes met his for a brief moment as if she could feel the weight of his stare, and she immediately tucked the chain beneath her T-shirt. Well, hell, that made him feel worse.
“I might be grasping at straws here, but something about this whole thing feels personal. More than just someone trying to take revenge out on the President by killing his son and using us to carry out their plans,” Roman said, drawing Wyatt’s attention, and then Finn shared their theory about Ezra being radicalized and perhaps not dead.
“Chris just mentioned the same thing, but Harper rejected that possibility. She said the only reason Ezra would have done something that extreme was if he were under duress or if someone he cared about had been threatened,” Wyatt told them.
Roman understood the need to protect those he loved. Hadn’t that been so much of his life story, especially as of late?
“Well, maybe Ezra has a wife and child now.” He wasn’t sure if he should refer to Ezra in the past or present tense. Was he dead or not?
“Hey.” A.J. joined them now in the bedroom. “Guess what news my genius wife just stumbled upon? Well, not so much stumbled upon since she went to FBI Headquarters to try and help us out.”
“Yeah?” Roman tipped his head, anxious to hear good news.
“Mauricio had a sister, and she flew to D.C. the same night of the car bomb. I’m thinking Mauricio told her to get out of town to keep her safe,” A.J. said. “Ana’s trying to locate where she is in D.C. to see if she knows anything.”
Roman faced the window, his thoughts working overtime.
“If this isn’t solely about Knox . . . What if Mauricio’s sister going to the States is another trap set for us?
Think about it. We were led to Barcelona and a car bomb almost took out Harper.
Bravo goes to Israel to track down Ezra and Knox gets shot.
What if we assign someone to track down Mauricio’s sister and—”
“Ana gets hurt,” A.J. finished for him.
Roman swiveled around to find the entire team now crowding the space, and his attention cut straight to Harper.
Her soft eyes were positioned on him. “Someone seems to know our moves before we make them. They’re anticipating our actions.”
“So,” Wyatt began, crossing his arms and setting his back to the wall by the door, “we let them think they’re successfully baiting us.
If Ana doesn’t mind, at least.” He looked to A.J.
“We have her follow the trail to Mauricio’s sister, with backup, of course, but this time, we’re prepared for a possible trap.
And we get ahead of these sons of bitches. ”
“I, um.” A.J. swiped a hand over his head. “She’s five weeks pregnant,” he shared in a distressed tone. “We weren’t going to tell anyone yet since it’s so new, but I don’t want her taking risks.”
“That explains why she got sick earlier when Adriana had a bout of preggo nausea,” Chris said, and Roman wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but wow . . . another team baby?
“Congrats,” the guys said at the same time.
Harper looked straight at Roman, and his stomach clenched once again.
She wants my child. Brandon wanted to have kids with her.
Well, fuck that guy. He really wished the bastard wasn’t dead so he could handle him himself.
And he still needed to have a word with Zack.
Forcing Harper to continue dating Brandon after she’d learned the truth had been wrong.
He couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been for her.
Now he understood her walls. Her issues. Fears and concerns. And then he went and ruined everything. Most likely tore apart any trust she had with him after learning his secrets were the size of icebergs, and she’d barely scratched the surface.
He still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact she’d seen him the other day, burying a body.
Harper lowered her eyes to the floor, and he’d give anything to pull her into his arms and promise everything would work out. That he’d make her happy and be there for her forever. But wouldn’t that be the lie of the century?
Wyatt set a hand on A.J.’s shoulder. “Bravo will be heading back to D.C. after Knox is released from the hospital, probably first thing in the morning. We can have Ana virtually track down Mauricio’s sister, but we’ll have someone from Bravo bypass their stand-down orders to go find her.”
“Secret Service’s theory might still be right about what happened, and the sister’s not a trap,” A.J. noted. “What better way to start conflict than to make it look like a Palestinian is trying to kill the son of the American President while in Israel?”
“I’m going to put my A.J. conspiracy theorist hat on for a second,” Finn remarked, surveying the room, “and ask why would someone kill Ezra before the assassination attempt? Usually, that shit happens after. You know, chicken before the egg.”
“You mean, egg before the chicken?” A.J. arched a brow.
“Maybe the real man behind the shooting is Ezra,” Roman began, “and to clear his name, he faked his own death.”