Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
ELI
“Idon’t know how I let you talk me into making you bait,” I said to Sylvie as we closed the door to the short-term rental behind us.
“Because I’m not bait by myself,” she answered brightly, sending me a sharp grin.
I’d fought, and I’d lost. Sylvie wasn’t on her own, but she was still bait. And I still didn’t like the plan.
Wren had taken care of the most vulnerable part: running around Atlanta using Sylvie’s credit and debit cards to remind the bomber she was still out there.
It was uncanny how much Wren looked like Sylvie when she got her disguise together, but that was what Wren did—became anyone but herself, blending and misdirecting until she achieved her aim.
In this case, intriguing the bomber and sending the clear message that Sylvie thought it was over, and she was out there rebuilding her life.
Wren didn’t waste her efforts, going to an electronics store to replace Sylvie’s favorite microphone, to the mall to refill her closet, even to the office supply store for fresh notebooks and pens.
After a few days of that, Maddox confirmed that someone was crawling around in Sylvie’s email account and cloud storage, their signature close enough to the bomber’s that we decided we had our fish on the line. It was time to reel him in.
Miranda took over, securing the short-term rental––a newly renovated cottage in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood.
She’d explained, “If we put the rental on Sylvie’s card, he’s going to know it’s a trap. He’ll buy that she’s out doing some shopping, but not that we’d let her out from under our protection completely. Not yet.”
“If we aren’t putting it on my card,” Sylvie had asked, “how will we draw him out?”
“You’re going to get bored and order delivery,” Wren said, grinning, “forgetting that your credit card is connected to the delivery app.”
“Oh. Clever,” Sylvie murmured, her eyes lighting in appreciation.
I shook my head. “He’s not going to fall for that.”
“He will,” Wren said, “because you two will actually be there.”
Even now that it was happening, my initial reaction of fuck no reared back up.
Every cell in my body rejected that idea.
I wanted to grab Sylvie and lock her in the safe house for, I don’t know, the rest of our lives.
Every reasonable thought I had told me that was a no-go.
Didn’t matter. Sylvie would be safe. But I was outvoted before I could make my case.
“We can cover you,” Ryder said, looking to Miranda, who nodded soberly. “If you pick the right spot, it won’t be dangerous.”
“Unless he tries to blow the place up again,” Maddox rumbled. “We’ll see him coming in.”
“We have a location,” Cooper said. “It’s a rental run by friends. We’ve used it once or twice and have a good handle on the defenses. I’ll check and see if it’s open.”
Cooper tapped in the messaging app on his phone, and a minute later got a positive response.
“All right, we’ve got it,” he said. “It’ll be empty in two days. That give you enough time to lay the rest of your breadcrumbs?” he asked Wren.
“Plenty,” she agreed.
I wasn’t happy, but as Cooper had pointed out, Sylvie needed her life back. And the only way to give her that was to neutralize this guy. We were done playing defense.
“Are you good with this?” he’d asked Sylvie.
And fuck me, but she’d nodded, grinning in anticipation. I loved her courage. I just wished I could turn it off now and then.
All of our planning led us to this cute little cottage that was walking distance to restaurants and shopping, with flowers on the porch, starched curtains in the windows—and my team scattered around the small lot, hidden in the darkness.
A one-bedroom space with a small living room/kitchen area, a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, and a bedroom so small it held only the king-size bed.
There were eyes everywhere, and still, I didn’t like it.
“You ready?” Sylvie asked me, standing in the kitchen, looking at her phone screen. “What should I order?”
“Burgers,” I responded immediately. “There’s a great burger place a few blocks away.”
I took her phone and pulled the restaurant up in the food delivery app before handing it back.
“Ooh, milkshakes,” she said, tapping the screen to place her order. I gave her mine when she was done, and she tapped it in. “All right.” She rolled her shoulders back. “It’s done. Now we just wait.”
“You already know,” I said, trying to convince my nerves to settle, “investigations involve a lot of waiting.”
“So true.”
She crossed the room to the sofa we’d agreed was the safest place to sit, slightly out of view of the front window, but visible enough to someone wanting to confirm we were inside. From that angle, if he was going to take a shot at us, he’d have to get close enough to be seen.
My team had the surroundings scoped out well enough that I was only a little worried about a sniper.
I was a little worried about everything.
If we could have gotten away with using Wren as bait here, too, I would have pushed for that.
But Cooper had reminded us, “You saw him when you saved Sylvie, and he knows it. He needs both of you now.”
Sylvie had refused to consider me playing bait unless she was beside me. I’d lost that argument too.
We pretended to watch TV, Sylvie curled into me, her leg bouncing restlessly out of sight of the window. We both jerked in alarm when the doorbell rang. My phone beeped with a message from Ryder.
All clear. Food delivery.
I opened the door to what I guessed was a college student picking up extra cash. He handed me our food and left. We ate, every bite tasting like sawdust. I hated to waste a good burger, but I couldn’t relax enough to enjoy anything when every sense I had was on high alert.
There were no more knocks on the door. No creak of a footstep on the porch. Nothing. By midnight, both of us were flagging.
“Do we just go to bed?” Sylvie asked, her shoulders drooping in disappointment and fatigue.
“We can try again tomorrow,” I said. “But yeah. For now, let’s get some rest.”
I checked the secure messaging app on my phone.
No updates. The team would swap out in half an hour.
We were as safe as we could be, and Sylvie needed sleep.
From the bed, we had a direct view down the short hallway to the front door.
I lay beside her, watching the rise and fall of her chest as I slipped into a light sleep.
I wouldn’t let myself go all the way under. Not until Sylvie was safe.
The vibration of my phone, followed by the low creak of the porch stairs, jerked me fully awake not long after three a.m. I tightened my arm around Sylvie, sliding a hand over her mouth. Her eyes flew open, and I whispered in her ear, “We’ve got action. Don’t move.”
She gave a short nod, and I slid my hand away.
“Trust,” I breathed, rolling into her, half shielding her body, feigning sleep as I heard the front door swing open and close almost silently, and saw a dark shape move down the hallway toward us.
All they would see was a couple wrapped in each other, tucked into bed, fast asleep. Vulnerable. Easy prey.
The footsteps stopped at the door to the bedroom. Through slitted eyes, I watched the bomber’s arm rise and take aim at us, the black metal of his weapon catching the faint light from the hall. I braced, reminding myself: Trust.
A shadow moved in the hall behind him. He caught the scuff of a shoe and started to turn, but he was too late.
A second later the gun was wrenched from his grip.
The light flicked on, and Ryder was there, the barrel of his 9mm shoved into the back of the bomber’s skull.
Maddox stood beside them, the bomber’s gun in his hand, trained on its owner.
“Secure him,” Ryder said.
Maddox flipped the safety and stowed the extra weapon in his cargoes. He pulled a set of restraints out of his pocket, wrenching our would-be killer’s hands behind him.
Ryder tapped his ear with his free hand. “Call it in. He’s secured.”
Law enforcement had been interested in our guy. Now that we had him, the FBI would be on the way, happy to take him off our hands.
In the time we had left, we wanted answers.
“Who hired you?” Ryder demanded.
The bomber’s expression was flat. Sylvie had said he was charming and friendly when they first met at the building he’d blown up. There was no sign of charm here. The bomber’s eyes were dead, his jaw hard, face resolved.
He didn’t answer Ryder’s question. Didn’t even flinch.
It was the reaction of a professional. Not that I’d had any doubt that was who we were dealing with. I sat up, shoving Sylvie behind me. He was disarmed and secured, but a primal part of me didn’t want so much as his eyes to touch her.
“What is Ghost Trace?” I asked, studying his face for any reaction.
Nothing.
“Did Ghost Trace hire you?” Maddox demanded. “How close are you to Silas?”
The faintest smirk crossed the bomber’s face. “Closer than you,” he said.
“But not close enough,” I pushed. A faint nod. Apparently, he agreed. “And Ghost Trace. Why did they hire you?”
“Ghost Trace isn’t a they,” he said. His tone was smug, but there was something else there. Fear? Resignation at being caught? He wasn’t scared of us, I could tell. Which meant he was afraid of something else.
“Then what is it?” Ryder demanded, nudging the barrel of his gun into the back of the bomber’s head.
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to tell you everything?” The bomber gave a thin, humorless smile. “I missed the monologuing class in villain school. You’ll have to figure the answers out yourself, if you can. My time is up.”
There was a curious, resigned flatness to his last words that I didn’t understand.
He cocked his head to the side as if listening to something we couldn’t hear.
I saw the shadow of something in his ear, like a compact hearing aid.
A red light pulsed, the shell of his ear glowing for a split second.
His body locked solid as a jolt seemed to go through him.
I would have thought he’d been tased, but the only people near him were Ryder and Maddox.
They both held a gun on him, but no taser.
Nothing that could deliver a shock strong enough to have him crumple to the floor.
His knees gave out like a hinge whose pin had been pulled, his body going down with a thud. He fell on his side, the tiny device in his ear tumbling to the floor, pushed out by a thick stream of blood running across his cheek and dripping out of his nose to pool beneath his head.
“What the fuck was that?” Maddox asked, staring at the body at his feet with wide eyes. “Did he do that to himself? Or did he?—”
“I don’t think he did it to himself,” Ryder said, watching the motionless form of the bomber on the floor.
“I heard something just before that light flashed. A voice, but it sounded mechanical. Like a countdown. 3-2-1, and then—” Ryder lifted his chin to indicate the moment the bomber had gone down.
He stepped back, scanning the hall and the open door of the cottage.
“Someone triggered that device,” I finished for him. “They knew he’d been captured.”
“Or they were listening,” he said, grim. “And who the fuck is they?”
“Ever since Silas disappeared,” Maddox said in a low voice, his eyes fixed on the blood pooling at his feet, “every answer only gives us more questions.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I shifted to the side to let Sylvie sit up, wrapping my arm around her to steady her as she rolled forward on the mattress to study the body on the floor.
“He looks very dead.” She glanced at me for confirmation. I was as sure as I could be without taking the guy’s pulse.
“He is,” I agreed. “That’s one problem solved. Whoever hired him has our names, but my bet is they’ll focus on Silas. With their first assassin out of the game, I doubt they’ll waste the next on us. Not when we only made the list as collateral damage.”
Maybe it would have been better if the bomber had been arrested. The FBI had been hoping to collect a prisoner. Instead, they’d be picking up a body. He would have given us answers, but Sylvie was safer if he was dead.
We’d find the answers on our own.
“It’s okay,” I said, pulling Sylvie back from her view of the body. “We’ll need to lie low for a while, to make sure we’re clear, but I think the immediate danger is over. Even if they were listening, they know we don’t know anything.”
“Yet,” Maddox said.
Sylvie eased into my arms and lay her head on my shoulder. After a second, she whispered, “This problem might be solved, but until we know what Ghost Trace is and why an assassin was sent after Emily and Silas, it’s not over.”
I turned my head to kiss her hair, the tension I’d been holding for days draining away.
She and Maddox were right. This wasn’t the end.
We had more questions today than the day Sylvie had walked into Sinclair Security.
But with the bomber dead, she was as safe as we could make her until we unraveled Silas’s secrets.
I could live with that. As long as I had Sylvie.