Chapter 33
MIA
The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at once, and every nerve ending in my body ignites.
“Hello, Mia.”
I spin, hand already reaching for the gun I don’t have—fuck, I left it with Kat—and my eyes find him standing by the desk. Not a shadow. Not a trick of the light.
Vanguard
He’s in the suit. The full tactical armor, all black and gleaming in spots with something that could be blood, the kind of thing that makes him look less like a man and more like a weapon of mass destruction.
And on the desk, my notebook lies splayed open where he must have dropped it.
My notebook. The one with all my observations, my intel, my—
Oh god.
Oh fuck.
“Or should I say—what’s the proper term?
” He steps toward me, and I step back before I can stop myself.
His eyes are flat. Dead. The impossible blue I’ve memorized has gone icy cold and distant, like something vital behind them has been switched off.
“Agent Baxter? Operative Baxter?” He takes another step forward, I take another backward.
“What do your handlers call you when you’re reporting on the asset you’ve been fucking?
Baxter’s not even your real name is it? Is Mia? ”
“Nate—” I say, though I’m trying to figure out the best way out of this, out of here.
When shit went down at the warehouse, part of me wondered if it had been him—it had been too chaotic to tell and I ran at the first opportunity.
And if that was the case then my cover was already blown.
But seeing him with my notebook means it’s not just blown, it’s absolutely imploded.
“Don’t you even try that,” he says, his voice like steel. “Don’t say my name like that. Like we’re still—” He laughs, and the sound makes my blood run cold. It’s borderline manic. “Like any of it was real.”
My back hits the wall. Nowhere left to go.
God, I hope Bayo is listening right now.
Vanguard closes the distance between us, planting one hand beside my head, leaning in close. Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body, smell wind and ozone and something darker underneath.
Something like violence, barely contained.
I have to think my way out of this before it’s too late and yet I can’t remember any contingency plans, can’t remember much of anything because the anger and the hurt and the million emotions that are tearing at him in front of my eyes are stealing my ability to be rational, to be the agent I need to be.
“I was at the warehouse tonight,” he says quietly.
Well, that confirms it.
“Watched the whole thing,” he says. “You’re quite the little killer, aren’t you? Maybe that should be your new nickname, huh? I mean, that knife work was impressive. Professional. You didn’t feel a thing, did you? Not a moral bone in that body.”
My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. “Let me explain—”
“Explain what?” He picks up the notebook and waves it at me before he tosses it onto the bed.
“How you seduced me for information? How every confession I gave you went straight back to, what, British intelligence?” He’s shaking now, tremors running through his massive frame, like a volcano about to erupt.
“How you were evaluating me? Deciding whether I needed to be eliminated?”
Oh god, oh god.
“It wasn’t—”
“I. Heard. Everything.” His other hand comes up, caging me completely.
“At your little safehouse. Your friends, your fellow spies, whatever they are. I heard what you are. What you were sent to do.” His face twists.
“If London decides he’s a threat, you know what you might have to do.
That’s a direct quote, sweetheart. From the woman you work with. ”
I can feel the blood drain from my face. He was there. Invisible, listening to everything. He heard Kat’s warning, heard me defend him, followed me from Red Hook.
“I killed a dozen men for you tonight,” he goes on, eyes boring holes into me. “Tore them apart with my bare hands. And the whole time, you were lying to me. The whole time, you were planning how to kill me if your masters gave the order.”
“That’s not—”
“Emotional attachment forming despite countermeasures.” He throws my own words back at me, quoted from the notebook. “Countermeasures. You had countermeasures in place to keep yourself from caring about me. Like I was a disease you were trying not to catch.”
“Most of those notes were from the beginning!” The words tumble out, desperate. “Before I really knew you, before I—”
“Before what?” He leans closer, his lips nearly brushing my ear. “Before you realized I was useful? Before you figured out how to manipulate me for maximum intel extraction?”
“Before I fell for you, you bloody idiot!”
The words ring in the silence between us.
His expression falters for a second. A crack in that fiery ice that lets something raw and wounded peek through before it’s sealed back up again.
“Fucking lies,” he seethes, but there’s less certainty in his voice now. “Everything you told me was a lie.”
“Not everything.” I hold his gaze, willing him to see past the spy to the woman underneath. “The mission was real. The cover was real. But what I felt—what I feel—that’s real too.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that?” he says that with an acidic huff.
“I don’t know.” My voice cracks. “I don’t know what you’re supposed to believe or what you want to believe. But I’m telling you the truth.”
He stares at me for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes.
Then his hand shoots out and closes around my throat, squeezing ever so slightly. A reminder of what he can do.
Of what he has done.
Suddenly I hear Bayo in my ear. “Uh, Mia I just caught the end of that. Are you okay?”
I freeze.
Nate freezes. His nostrils flare.
He fucking heard that.
He fucking heard Bayo!
“What is that?” Vanguard growls, his laser focus going to my earrings as Bayo calls out my name again.
“Mia, do you copy?”
The realization that my earrings are comms, that people have been listening every time I wear them, dawns on Vanguard’s face. His expression turns uglier than I ever thought possible. It’s like he transforms into someone else entirely.
He reaches out and rips the earrings out, nearly taking out my lobes as he does so. I yelp in pain, my hands flying up to my ears and he takes the earrings and puts them in his mouth, swallowing them dry.
What the actual fuck?
I look down at my hands, at the smear of blood from my throbbing lobes, but he doesn’t seem sorry in the slightest, just swallows again for good measure.
He ate my comms!
“You’re coming with me,” he grinds out. “And you’re going to tell me everything. Every lie. Every report. Every single thing you know about me and Global Dynamix and what the hell they have to do with a Russian trafficker.”
“And if I refuse?” I say, because refusing to answer questions is what I was born to do.
He smiles but it’s not his smile, not the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes, that makes me feel seen and desired. No, this smile makes me feel fear in the marrow of my bones.
“Then I guess we find out what happens when you push me past my breaking point.”
I see his hand move toward his watch. I know what’s coming—I’ve read the specs on his tech, I know about the tranquilizer function—but knowing doesn’t help. I’m too slow, too injured, and too fucking destroyed by the look in his eyes to move.
The dart catches me in the neck.
The drug works instantly.
The world shifts and shakes. His face blurs. I feel myself falling, and then his arms are around me, catching me, lifting me against his chest like I weigh nothing.
Like I’m something to be treasured.
Like I’m something he wants to keep.
And then darkness swallows me whole.
I wake to unfamiliar sheets and a headache that feels like the world’s worst hangover times a million.
For a moment, I don’t know where I am. I see a white ceiling and grey walls. Floor-to-ceiling windows with smart glass dimmed to near-opacity, the city a smear of light beyond. Everything is expensive, minimalist, and has a familiar masculine smell that I had grown to love.
His penthouse. I must be in his penthouse somewhere.
Memory crashes back—the confrontation, the dart, his arms around me—and I jerk upright, heart pounding, scanning for threats.
The room is empty.
It’s not the bedroom I remember, not his. This is one of the guest rooms. The furniture is sparse but high-end. There are two doors, solid and painted to look like wood.
Locked, of course. One is anyway, the other is a small washroom with a toilet, sink and shower—nothing I can make a weapon with.
I mean, I suppose I could try ripping off the metal shower head.
If I was captured by anyone else, I could do something with it, or the metal snaking hose.
I could definitely choke someone with that, like an extra-large garrote wire.
But this is Vanguard, the world’s most powerful man we’re talking about, and he would break it all with a clench of his fist. Would break me too while he’s at it.
I move to the windows. Also locked, the smart glass unresponsive to my touch.
I search for vents, weak points in the walls, anything that might offer escape.
Nothing. The room has been prepared. Professionally, deliberately, like someone thought very carefully about how to contain a person who knows all the ways out of things.
Because he’s not stupid, I think grimly. Just furious.
My tactical blacks are gone. Someone—him—changed me while I was unconscious, so that I’m just in my black tank top, bra and knickers I wore underneath. The thought of his hands on my body while I was helpless leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I check myself for injuries. The wounds from the warehouse have been tended—bruises wrapped, cuts cleaned, my shoulder immobilized in a proper sling. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.
The lock clicks.
I spin, dropping into a defensive stance despite the pain, and watch the door swing open.