Betrayed (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 9) (20 page)

She cupped his cheek in her hand, swallowed. He needed to know this part. “Do you know what it did to me that day, when I thought you died in front of me?” Her voice was rough. “It killed me. I was numb at first, just operating on autopilot. I barely remember what happened after that, how I got away from the feds and made it to a private surgeon to get my arm fixed.” She paused when he took her left forearm and raised it to his lips to kiss the scars there.

Now that it was all flooding out of her, it was impossible to stop. “All I kept thinking was that it was my fault you’d died. If you hadn’t been worried about saving me and Marisol, you never would have been shot. I put you in danger by interfering and freeing Marisol from that boat, and you paid for my mistake with your life.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes it was,” she insisted angrily. “And God, that gutted me. I felt like I was walking around with a gaping hole in my chest, and the only thing that kept me going was the promise I’d made—to kill every last one of the bastards responsible for what happened to Frank. It was the only thing I had left.”

“Vengeance.”

“Yes.”

He nodded, and it was a relief to know he understood the burning need that had driven her for so long. “Know what I was thinking about when I thought I was dying?”

She lifted her head to look at him, her heart aching at the mention of it. “What?”

“I was looking up at you. You were crying, begging me to hold on, and that look on your face told me you really did care. But I didn’t want to hold on. Because I knew if I lived, I’d either wind up behind bars or maybe facing the death sentence. But mostly, I knew if I lived, you’d never be safe.”

She drew her head back in shock. “
What
?” What the hell kind of thinking was that?

He nodded slowly, his expression solemn. “It’s true. I was on the other Fuentes lieutenants’ hit list. If I died, then my enemies would have no reason to target you anymore. You’d be safe. Free.” His lips curved in a sardonic grin, a spark of humor in his dark gaze. “But that was before I woke up in the hospital and was told you were actually a badass government assassin.”

She couldn’t have summoned a smile at that moment if her life had depended on it. Georgia could barely process it all.

She tucked her face into the curve of his neck and took in a shaky breath, inhaling his scent. He was an amazing man, the most complex she’d ever met, a complicated blend of dark and light.

And yet she’d known from the moment she’d met him that he was inherently a good person, despite everything he’d done in his quest for his own brand of cartel justice. An avenging angel instead of a psychopathic serial killer, as the authorities would have everyone believe.

Much like her. And he’d wanted to die to protect her.

“You’re shredding me,” she whispered, aching inside.

“I don’t mean to.” He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. The kiss was soft, tender, filled with such caring it made her throat tighten. “I’ve missed you so damn much.”

A rush of tears threatened. In that moment she knew there was no way she could ever walk away from this man. Not after she’d already lost him once. “I missed you too.”

“Sometimes I think you’re the only thing that got me through my recovery. I thought about you constantly, wondered what had happened to you and where you were, hoped like hell that you were safe.”

She swallowed. “I hate to think of you lying there in pain, wondering about me and whether I lied to you about everything.”

He shook his head. “Not everything. I knew the chemistry part was real. And I knew that for you to react the way you did when I was dying, I had to mean something to you.”

“You do mean something to me.” Huge understatement.

He stilled above her, watching her with that intense way he had. “How much?”

I think I’m in love with you.

She would cut out her own tongue before saying that out loud when he hadn’t given her anything first.

She shot him a sharp frown. “Enough that I just let you do me against the bathroom wall and have me lying here naked with you now, thereby compromising my objective for the mission I’ve been planning for almost a year.”

A slow, sexy smile spread across his face, full of masculine satisfaction, turning her all mushy inside. But a moment later he turned serious again. “Then don’t do this alone. Let me help you with this.”

If she was honest with herself, the truth was she’d already changed her mind back in the bathroom. “No, you’re right. It’s time for me to put my need for vengeance aside. I’ll tell Rycroft where the flash drive is. We’ll get it together and expose the people involved, make them pay with a life sentence. A bullet through the heart is too easy for them anyway. This way they’ll have years of suffering.” That and having more time with Miguel were the only things that soothed her stinging conscience.

Miguel let out a relieved breath, cradled the back of her head in one hand and covered her mouth with his. “Thank you.”

Georgia twined her arms around his neck and drew him closer, getting lost in the caress of his lips and the erotic glide of his tongue. For just another few minutes, he was hers.

After that she would leave this bedroom and tell Rycroft what he wanted to know. But if she could have made time stop to stay tangled with Miguel in this bed, she’d have done it in a heartbeat.

Because she already knew that people like them didn’t get happy endings. In the end, she’d have no choice but to let him go.

Nico’s attention sharpened when a silver SUV pulled into the bank parking lot. Traffic in and out of the lot had been steady over the past couple hours but had begun to slow in the last little while. This particular vehicle caught his attention immediately.

The SUV had tinted windows, and it pulled right up to the front entrance rather than parking. As he watched, two men got out, mostly blocked from view by the body of the vehicle. From his vantage point Nico could see that one of them had brown hair sprinkled with gray and the other was dark-haired.

Ducking down lower in the driver’s seat, he raised his binos to get a better look.

One of the men turned slightly and he immediately recognized Rycroft.

“
Yes
.” Finally.

Switching his focus to the other man, his heart rate spiked when he saw Bautista’s profile. Both men were vigilant, scanning the area around them.

Someone else was still inside the SUV, other than the driver. Was it Georgia?

With slow, careful movements Nico reached behind him to retrieve his weapon. Just as his hand closed around it, a black truck zipped into the lot and pulled alongside the SUV, blocking it completely from view.

Definitely not random. The truck had to be with them.

Cursing under his breath, he shifted to try and get a better angle to see what was happening, but couldn’t. Someone popped out of the backseat and Rycroft and Bautista rushed them into the bank.

Had to be Georgia.

His grip tightened around his rifle. For a moment he thought about getting out and circling around the side of the building on foot. There was a tall hedge running along the east side of the parking lot that would offer concealment.

That wouldn’t work though. Taking a shot now would only potentially give him one kill. He needed two. And if he shot now, he’d not only give himself away, any survivors would immediately come after him. If he screwed up, he’d be dead.

No. Too risky. Think it through. Bautista had always told him to think it through, be at least three moves ahead of your target.

He’d be better off following them, catching them completely off guard when they least expected it. Maybe disable the vehicle, force them to scatter. Then he could pick his targets off individually and escape.

Nico set his weapon down and studied the black truck, but couldn’t see the driver through the tinted windows. Reaching for his phone, he texted Diego.

They’re here. Going after them.

It was torture to be this close and have to wait, but his discipline held him in place.

A few minutes later the top of Bautista’s head appeared above the roof of the truck as he exited the bank. Moments after that, the SUV quickly drove out of the parking lot with the black truck directly behind it.

They had to have the contents of the safety deposit box. He could retrieve it once he killed them, wrap everything up this afternoon and be on a plane back to Miami tonight.

Excitement flashed through him. This was what he lived for, the thrill of the hunt, his prey wary but not realizing he was so close. Not realizing that their time was almost up.

He waited until a few cars were between him and the other vehicles, then pulled out onto the street and followed. They were headed north out of town, probably about to head back to NSA headquarters in Maryland.

He was going to disrupt those plans indefinitely.

Making a quick decision, he turned right at the next light and sped up a side street. The only highway out of town was a two-lane road. Once they were on it, they’d have to drive another twelve miles before they reached a turnoff. If he could get ahead of them and onto the highway, he could speed ahead, find a place to wait and then disable the SUV.

If they survived the resulting crash, he could pick them off one by one as they crawled out of the wreckage.

****

Georgia plugged the flash drive into the laptop and waited for it to load. She’d placed it in the safety deposit box herself soon after Frank was killed, but there was still a tiny possibility someone else had found out about it and the other backups. She needed to make sure this one was authentic, and still contained the information she’d loaded on it.

To her relief, the files that came up looked right, and the first one she opened contained the pictures she’d taken of the crime scene at Frank’s house. Even though she’d been prepared for the sight of it, it hit her hard to see him lying there dead on the tile floor.

His face was cherry red from the cyanide poisoning. He’d ripped open his own shirt during his final struggle to breathe and his throat and chest were covered in scratches made by his own fingernails as he’d clawed for air.

A hand closed around hers, warm fingers enveloping it.

She glanced over at Miguel and squeezed his hand in return, touched by the gesture. There was so much more to him than met the eye.

It was true she’d always miss Frank. But at least now with Rycroft about to take over, she knew the men behind his murder would at least face justice for what they’d done. And Frank would have wanted that rather than her winding up serving a life sentence in some dark hole, or being killed while trying to hunt his killers down.

And now that she’d found Miguel, she wanted to live for the first time in forever.

“Everything looks okay to me,” she said to Rycroft, who was swiveled around in the front passenger seat, watching her while Briar drove. Gage Wallace was behind them in another vehicle, for added security on the way back to Fort Meade.

“Good. Pull up the emails you’ve got on file and let me take a look at what—”

Georgia jumped as something slammed into the front of the SUV. Briar cursed and turned the wheel to correct the sharp sideways lurch and keep them in their lane. “Somebody just put a round through the engine block,” she said grimly.

Everyone looked out the window toward the direction where the shot must have come from. “Has to be hidden in the woods,” Georgia said.

The glass was bullet-resistant and the body was reinforced, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in danger of being shot. As Georgia automatically gripped the door handle to brace herself, another loud bang sounded and the big vehicle skidded sideways.

“Shit,” Briar muttered. “Tire’s blown.”

“Where is that fucker?” Rycroft snarled, searching for the shooter. Already the vehicle was slowing. Smoke began billowing out from under the hood.

Briar counteracted the skid expertly, stopping them from flipping over, then wheeled them around to face back toward town and brought the SUV to a plunging, rocking stop on the gravel shoulder, a dozen yards or so from the thick band of forest that bordered the east side of the highway.

Georgia yanked the flash drive out of the laptop and shoved it into her hip pocket, then reached into the back where their weapons were stowed. Miguel was already grabbing his rifle, handed her hers. None of them knew how much time they had before the shooter opened up again, and he or she would be moving toward them right now.

“Everybody out,” Rycroft ordered.

Georgia slid out the rear driver’s side door after Miguel and hunkered down behind the safety of the SUV’s body.

The sound of a racing engine came from her right. A heartbeat later the black pickup roared past them and plunged to a sudden halt, swinging around sideways to block them, giving them added protection close to the tree line.

The truck had barely come to a stop before Gage Wallace popped out of the driver’s side door, a pistol in hand, and took shelter behind the cab. “Shooter’s somewhere to the northeast, hidden in the trees,” he told them.

“Think it’s just the one?” Rycroft asked.

“Dunno,” he answered, then ducked lower behind his own vehicle as a shot slammed into the engine block, leaving a good-sized hole where it had entered the grill.

So much for having a getaway car.

A car came around the corner, squealed to a stop when the driver saw the two vehicles, stranded and smoking, in the middle of the road. Rycroft immediately waved them off, shouted at the driver to stay in their car.

Georgia glanced around. Shit. They couldn’t stay here, waiting to be picked off, and every second they hesitated was a second the shooter was moving into a better position.

There was no way for someone to cross the highway without them seeing, unless the shooter managed to do it around the curve in the road up ahead. Either the person was maneuvering for a better shot, or they were retreating.