Betrayed (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 9) (10 page)

It stung, the way she flung that out, considering she’d been the one to deceive him and not the other way around. He’d hidden things from her, true, but he hadn’t outright lied to her. Hadn’t purposely tried to deceive her.

“Not gonna happen,” answered Briar, who was watching her with a closed expression.

Georgia’s already pale gaze turned ice cold. “There are at least two professional assets after me that I know of. Maybe more.”

She nodded. “We know. Rycroft is out there right now tracking one of them.”

“Why do you even care? This isn’t your fight.”

Briar stalked forward now, stopping at the side of the bed. Eyes narrowed, she tugged down the side of her black cargo pants to expose a small tattoo on her left hip.

The same one Georgia had on her left hip, he realized with a start.

He’d glimpsed it for only a second when he’d stripped that dress off her the night he’d picked her up for their one and only date. Instead of going to dinner as planned they’d spent the entire night in her bed, feasting on each other in the darkness. He hadn’t had the chance to see her tat in the light. What did it signify?

“Because no matter what else has happened,
this
still means something to me,” Briar snapped before jerking her waistband up again. “We took an oath. All of us. And you, Trin and I were closer than blood sisters. We vowed to always be faithful to one another, to never leave one of us behind. That’s why I’m here and it’s why I’m risking my life to help you. Deal with it.”

But there had to be more to it than that, Bautista thought, at least for Rycroft. Way more.

A bitter laugh escaped Georgia. “I don’t deserve your loyalty. For godsake, I tried to kill you last year.”

Bautista’s eyes shot to Briar in surprise, but she didn’t deny it. Well well, wasn’t that interesting.

Watching her face off with Briar, Bautista was even more intrigued about this mysterious woman who’d managed to tangle him up inside. He shouldn’t be thinking about getting her naked again but an idea was already forming in his mind.

Georgia wouldn’t be easy to crack. The best way for him to find out what he wanted might be to have her naked and at his mercy.

Georgia’s heart was pounding, making the throb in her skull ten times worse. The pills she’d taken and the mouthful of water were rolling precariously around her stomach. God dammit, she
hated
this. Detested being weak and helpless, trapped.

She was acutely aware of Miguel watching her in silence at the other side of the bed and didn’t know what to think, what to feel. She was so confused. Seeing him had left her reeling, tearing open wounds that had only recently begun to close. She couldn’t believe he was alive, that she hadn’t found out. That he hadn’t told her before now.

Not that he’d have been able to find you
, she reminded herself.

He had to know about her past by now, had to know that she’d lied to him before. He wouldn’t trust her now, would never believe she’d been falling for him back in Miami. Since then, for some reason her feelings for him had only deepened. Now that she knew he was alive, she didn’t know what to do with them.

The bitter irony didn’t escape her. He was alive, but any chance of rekindling their relationship was long dead now. A sharp arrow of grief embedded in her heart at the realization.

Pushing the thoughts from her mind for now, she focused on Briar as the taut silence stretched between them. She couldn’t believe this was all happening.

Briar gave a small shrug. “You were following orders. And I’m over it. But that doesn’t change how things stand right now because you’re not going anywhere.”

Georgia’s cheeks were flushed from fever, her body on fire with it. Her nostrils flared, anger tightening her features as she glared up at Briar. She had no right to interfere. None. Not anymore. “It’s my life! My choice.”

Briar shook her head. “I won’t sit back and watch you get killed because you’re bent on revenge. I won’t do it.”

Revenge? That was too simple. What she burned for was the chance to mete out the kind of justice the government that had created her would never sanction. Even having Miguel standing before her alive and well didn’t change that.

Those murderous traitors had killed Frank, and she was going to see to it they paid dearly for it. “I never asked you to,” Georgia answered coldly.

Briar didn’t even blink. “Too bad. I’m not walking away from this. From you.”

Georgia glared up at her, aware that her breathing had turned rapid, shallow. The surge of anger threatened to steal her breath.

Her Valkyrie sister and former lover were setting her up.

Anguish twisted inside her. It hurt, this betrayal. Way more than she’d expected, proving she wasn’t dead inside after all, as she’d wrongly assumed all this time.

She thought of the night she’d been taken away from the training facility. They’d come to take her away without any warning in the middle of the night, pulling her from her bed and ordering Trinity and Briar to stay put.

She still remembered the look in Briar’s eyes. Utter devastation. Grief. The trainers had decided the three of them were too close, that their bond was disrupting the cadres efforts to turn them into killing machines. And so they’d taken steps to shatter that bond.

Georgia would never admit it to anyone, but that first night in her new facility she’d buried her face in her pillow and cried herself to sleep, afraid and alone without her sisters. But the next morning she’d woken up and realized that part of her life was over. Forever. She’d moved on because she’d had no choice.

Georgia pulled in a calming breath. She might not know why Briar and Miguel were doing this, but she had her suspicions. All the intelligence and law enforcement agencies interested in her case must at least suspect that she’d been the one to kill Garcia in Miami this past June. They just didn’t have enough hard evidence to pin it on her. She’d made absolutely sure of that.

Even if they tried to charge her with it, they wouldn’t want to admit that she was an assassin trained by the U.S. government. Without forensic evidence and a reason to arraign/prosecute her publicly, they’d have no choice but to let her go. Because no DA in their right mind would ever take the case on without substantial evidence in place, not when they’d risk looking stupid and it might harm their career.

Right now she had the power in this equation and intended to capitalize on it. The freaking U.S. government and its broken justice system could suck on that for a while and see how they liked it.

Swallowing, she forced herself to meet the eyes of the man who’d managed to steal beneath every defense she’d put around her jaded and cynical heart. Just the sight of him sent twin shots of warmth and trepidation through her. What he must think of her now that he knew the truth. “And what about you? Why are you here?”

Dark as black coffee those eyes stared back at her, unreadable as his expression. She knew she deserved the mistrust, but she regretted it nonetheless. Back in Miami she’d been playing a role to get close to him, had never expected to fall for him.

Now that he was standing before her, she didn’t know what to believe about his motives, whether she could trust him. And she was the farthest thing from naïve. There had to be something in it for him. Especially for a man like him.

“They offered me a deal,” he said, his deep voice stroking over her like a caress. “I took it.”

So that was it. He’d likely received a reduced sentence in turn for his cooperation. She didn’t begrudge him that. Not after everything he’d been through.

She raised her chin, looked from him to Briar. “Have you got a warrant? Because I won’t turn myself in.”
I’m going to finish what I started.
She had the evidence she found at Frank’s house after she found his body, and it was more than enough to indict the men involved in the plot to kill him.

But she would only give that up once they were dead. By
her
hand.

“We’re not here to arrest you,” Briar said quietly. “And we’re not charging you with anything.”

“So why all this?” She gestured to the both of them, the IV. They either wanted or needed something big from her. Maybe not them personally, but the NSA did. “Why go to the trouble of basically kidnapping me?”

“You’ll just have to trust us.”

She withheld a humorless laugh. The woman was impossible to read, though Georgia shouldn’t have been surprised. During their training, displaying emotion had been met with severe consequences from the trainers. Starvation. Beatings. Even solitary confinement.

It was only after dropping off grid that Georgia had finally been free to express the anger that drove her. Everything else, she hid carefully behind an icy mask.

Except for those times she’d spent with Miguel in Miami, she admitted to herself. Those had the most genuine human interactions she could ever recall having, apart from the relationship she used to have with her Valkyrie sisters. But that was all over now.

A sudden beeping wrenched her gaze to the bag Miguel had pulled the water from. She recognized the sound immediately. The portable monitor for her security system. He must have picked it up after he’d tranqed her.

Miguel turned toward the bag but Georgia wasn’t waiting. She already knew what it meant.

Instantly she reached for the IV site, began pulling the catheter free from her vein as she spoke. “Someone’s breached the security perimeter,” she told the others, applying pressure to the open IV site as she forced herself to her feet beside the bed.

Briar threw out a hand to steady her as she wobbled slightly, and tapped her earpiece. “Could be Rycroft. Where are you?” she asked a moment later. A pause, then she met Georgia’s gaze. “He’s one-point-three klicks northwest of here.”

Cold air washed over Georgia’s fevered skin, but Briar’s words sent a chill skittering up her spine. She was acutely aware of her near nakedness as she stood there, of the way Miguel’s stare was locked on her, magnetic and forceful. “Whoever that is on the monitor is less than four hundred yards away and closing.”

Miguel reached out and wrapped a hand around her upper arm, pulling her after him. “We’re getting you out of here,
now
.”

****

Nico crept away from where he’d hidden his ATV this last time and headed southeast on foot, back toward the area where he’d seen Georgia. It was after twenty-three-hundred hours now, more than an hour since she’d been shot.

The rain was still steady, helping reduce visibility and covering his tracks somewhat. In the time since leaving the site where Georgia had fallen he hadn’t seen a single vehicle on the road leading to the cabin, nor had he heard the sound of another motor moving along the forest trails.

He edged as close as he dared to the spot where she’d fallen. He still wasn’t sure she was dead. And if Bautista had been the one to shoot her, it was possible he’d only shot her with a tranq dart or something.

At first he’d assumed Bautista was working with the NSA to kill her, but now he suspected it might be more complicated than that. His former mentor had a strong aversion to killing women. Luckily Nico wasn’t as fussy about what targets he was willing to take out.

Hidden as well as he could be from any prying eyes in the area, unless they had a thermal imaging device, Nico looked through his binos, unsurprised to see that her body was gone. Whoever had shot her must have taken her.

But where? Carrying her on foot in this terrain and weather would be slow and cumbersome, and the shooter had to know they weren’t alone out here.

Bautista would certainly know, so he’d either be in evasion mode or seek-and-destroy mode. The hunting cabin was the only shelter Nico had seen for miles around in any direction. He might have gone there, maybe left Georgia with the guy he now knew was Alex Rycroft, or Jones before heading back out on the hunt.

The idea of his former mentor prowling these same woods, looking for him, was both thrilling and worrisome. Ever since he’d seen Bautista in that hotel, he’d known they were on a collision course.

Anticipation flowed hot through his veins. Sometime soon he’d finally have the chance to take him out, prove once and for all that he was the better sniper. A chance he’d been waiting for for years, though he’d never expected it would come from killing him.

Except his gut told him there was still someone else out here, waiting. Watching.

Moving with caution he slipped from one concealed position to the next, never staying put more than a few minutes at a time. He’d been ordered to kill both Georgia and Bautista. Whether or not she was already dead didn’t matter to him.

He had a feeling that once he found one of them, he’d find the other. All he had to do was get DNA from both bodies before he disposed of them, and Diego would pay him not only his usual sum, but a hefty bonus as well. He and Melissa would live a life of luxury, at least for a little while.

A few hundred yards down the slope, he found a natural hide site made out of an outcropping of stone. Sliding into it, he lay on his belly, wedged back deep in the crevice for maximum camouflage and peered out at the darkened forest through his high-powered scope.

It was a tight fit and a jagged part of the stone dug into his belly but he didn’t move. Snipers were trained relentlessly to ignore physical discomfort during an op.

Motionless, he surveyed the area. And his patience paid off.

Minutes later a slight movement through the screen of trees to his eight ‘o clock caught his attention. A man, his crouched silhouette mostly hidden behind a thick tree trunk.

Bautista? Or someone else? Likely headed for the cabin.

Nico pushed the unwanted rush of excitement from his mind. He waited in position, perfectly still, his heart rate calm, breathing slow and steady as he watched this new threat.

From this position he couldn’t get a decent shot off but he would be able to watch the person easily enough, maybe ID him. He’d stay right here and watch how things unfolded, move in to make the kill if necessary.