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

Summoning her strength, she forced her head to turn so that she could see the threat. Someone was just outside the bedroom door. A female, if Georgia assessed the build right.

Her weapons. She needed her weapons.

Move, dammit
, she ordered herself, refusing to give into the sluggishness pervading her. She needed to keep sharp, get control of her body so she could defend herself.

Her heart rate was elevated. Good. The faster her heart pumped, the more adrenaline her adrenal glands released, the faster it could counteract whatever drugs she’d been hit with. If there was only one person in the cabin with her, she might still be able to take them out and escape.

As silently as she could she rolled to her side. It seemed to take forever. And when she moved her arm she realized there was an IV tube plugged into the back of it.

Alarm jumped inside her. Her gaze shot to the bag hanging from the old brass headboard. It read Ringer’s solution but it might be fake. They could be drugging her still, keeping her helpless.

Fuck. Them.

Her fingers had just closed around the insertion site in the back of her forearm when a female voice from the doorway stopped her cold.

“You’re finally awake. Good.”

Georgia squinted as the woman came into view, trying to bring the blurry shape into focus. She sucked in a sharp breath when she recognized Briar standing there. For a moment she was too stunned to speak, just stared.

“What are you doing here?” she finally rasped out, her throat dry and tight.

“Rescuing you.”

She mentally snorted. “You’re here to bring me in.” The words were loaded with accusation.

Briar acknowledged the charge with a small shrug, those dark eyes locked on her. “However you want to look at it.”

Pain and betrayal ripped through her. There were only two Valkyries she’d bonded with during the program: Briar and Trinity. They’d been like sisters, protecting each other throughout the long, harsh training period. They’d shared a room together, shared secrets and hopes and dreams together. And now one of them had turned on her. That cut deep.

“Who are you working for?” Last she’d heard, there were rumors that Briar had been recruited by one of the intelligence agencies. But no confirmation about which one.

“The good guys.”

Yeah. Right. There were no good guys. Briar was here to bring her in, probably for some government agency, to try to stop her from carrying out her vendetta.

That wasn’t happening.

Georgia cast another frantic look around, but didn’t detect anyone else in the cabin with them. She reached for the IV needle again.

“Leave it. You’re dehydrated and fighting off some kind of infection.”

Georgia ignored her, began ripping at the tape holding the needle in place.

Quick footsteps sounded on the weathered floorboards, then Briar’s hand locked around her fingers and pried them free. “I said,
leave
it. If you don’t, I’ll cuff you.”

Georgia gritted her teeth and tried to pull free but couldn’t. She suppressed a growl, frustrated at how weak she was, and met Briar’s hard stare with one of her own.

“You need to let me go,” she ground out, her survival instinct pushing her to flee. “You don’t understand, you’re in danger here. There are others coming. I don’t have much time.”

“The rest of my team is taking care of the ‘others’ right now. You don’t need to worry.”

She let out a bitter laugh, fighting the wooziness that wouldn’t go away. “You have no idea what’s happening.” She needed to get free and go after her two remaining targets. They had to die for what they’d done, and she’d make sure they did, no matter what.

“Oh, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, actually. And either the CIA or one of Fuentes’s former goons is out there in the forest right now. So until I get the all clear from my team leader, we’re not going anywhere.”

Before Georgia could respond, Briar reached up and tapped her left ear. An earpiece, she realized. “She’s awake.”

Georgia tensed at the words. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded, heart beating even faster now.

“My team.”

The cryptic words ignited a rush of anger. She gathered herself, ready to spring and fight Briar for her freedom if that’s what it took. Weak or not, she’d damn well go down fighting.

Footsteps echoed outside on the wooden front porch. Georgia froze, her gaze shooting past Briar and back again. Another person in the cabin meant it would be nearly impossible for her to escape through the tunnel. “Who is it? Who’s coming?”

“Someone I hope you’ll be happy to see,” Briar replied.

What?
Georgia shook her head, fought to hold back the anger clawing deep in her chest. She couldn’t believe Briar was in on this. “Why are you doing this?”

That black gaze was unflinching. “Because I care about you and I don’t want you to die.”

The front door opened before either of them could get another word out. Quiet footfalls tread across the floorboards, but the person stopped outside the doorway, in the darkness outside the edge of the glowing circle cast by the bedside lamp.

Her pulse thudded in her ears in the sudden silence. She was aware of Briar watching her, registered the subtle but silent worry coming from the former Valkyrie.

Georgia didn’t dare tear her eyes off the doorway, determined to face this new threat. Heart in her throat she waited for a long moment, the tension coiling tighter and tighter in her stomach.

Gaze riveted on the rectangle of darkness outlined by the doorframe, she stared in stunned silence as a familiar figure materialized out of the shadows and stepped into the light.

A ghost.

Bautista stood unmoving in the doorway, aware of how hard his heart was thudding against his ribs. Those piercing, sky blue eyes seemed to bore right through him, full of shock.

And there was something else there too, something that looked a lot like wounded accusation. As if she couldn’t believe he’d purposely let her think he’d been dead all this time.

That single look floored him, and confirmed she’d never received the intel the NSA had leaked to certain sources about him being alive. His gut said that glimpse of emotion he’d just seen had been real, and he didn’t know what to do with that.

“What… You can’t…” She trailed off, staring at him in disbelief. “I saw you die.” She shook her head. “You can’t be him.” She flashed a panicked look at Briar, clearly convinced they were playing some kind of trick on her.

“It’s me,” he said softly, steeling himself against being sucked in by the wide-eyed routine. Sick or not, she’d already proven what a skillful actress she was.

Her gaze swung back to him and held, wary now. Confused. “I saw you die,” she whispered, and the naked pain in her voice stabbed him at the same time as it fueled the unstoppable tide of hope rising inside his heart.

She already duped you once
, the cynical voice in his head reminded him.

“I almost did.” Maintaining eye contact, he reached up and pulled the neckline of his sweater down to reveal the puckered scar at the top of his chest.

The bullet had smashed right through his body and exited out his upper back. Surgeons had operated four times to repair his damaged lung alone, not to mention all the others to deal with the bullet that had hit him in the back beneath the armpit and the one in his lower abdomen.

“It was close,” he murmured.

Staring at the irrefutable evidence before her, she swallowed, and when she lifted her gaze to his once more he caught a flash of vulnerability he’d never expected to see. He squashed the answering flood of tenderness it brought.

Dammit. Even though his game face was firmly in place, even though he’d sworn to keep his emotional distance until he knew all the missing information he wanted from her, he could already feel his guard slipping.

Which meant he was in big trouble. Because if he found out she’d been honest with him as far as their relationship had gone, he was fucking screwed.

Then she narrowed her eyes at him. “Wait. Did you dart me?”

“Yes.” And he didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it now that she’d come out of the anesthetic. Not if it might have saved her life.

“What did you tranq me with?”

“Ketamine.” She had to still be dizzy and nauseated from it.

Her jaw worked once, then she bit out, “How much?”

“Enough to make sure you were down and give us enough time to get you to shelter. The effects should wear off completely within another ten minutes.” He hoped. He’d never tranqed any of his targets before. A single shot through the heart or head had always been called for in his previous assignments.

She glared up at him. “Like I wasn’t feeling sick enough already.”

“When did you first get sick?” Briar asked. “Do you know what it is?”

Giving him one last glare, Georgia finally shifted her attention to her. “Poison, two days ago. I think someone must have covered the doorknob of my motel room back in D.C. with some sort of toxin, but I can’t be sure. The symptoms came on suddenly, a few hours after I touched it.”

Briar nodded. “What are they?”

“Fever. Nausea. Vomiting. Stomach pain. Body aches.” She aimed another accusing look at him. “A little like the side-effects of ketamine.”

Bautista didn’t look away as he ran through a list of possibilities. Could be any number of toxins, none of them good. They needed to get a blood panel and urinalysis done, make sure there was no permanent organ damage or anything like that.

“Whoever did it was either inept or hoping to make you just sick enough to slow you down so they could capture you,” he said.

At that she lost some of her hostile edge. “I know.”

“Who’s after you?” He had some theories and he was sure Rycroft and Briar had some of their own, but since they’d told him basically sweet fuck all about anything, he was forced to make his own deductions.

She lifted a golden brown eyebrow. “Other than you guys?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you have a good idea.”

She shrugged. “Does it matter?”

It mattered to him, and he had to be damn careful not to let her know it. He wanted confirmation of who she was after, what she knew or had that would make people want to silence her forever, and what would prompt Rycroft to take on this op personally. It had to be something big.

He needed to know what she was up against. What they were up against. Because there was no way in hell he was stepping aside and letting her fight this fight on her own. Not after the unguarded shock and relief he’d seen in her eyes when she’d first seen him.

And that probably made him the dumbest son of a bitch on the planet, but it was what it was.

He would just have to accept the weakness and make sure he didn’t give her the opportunity to hurt him again. The internal wound she’d inflicted with her deception hurt every bit as much as the bullet wounds that had nearly killed him. Not that he’d ever let her know it.

“And how the hell did you guys find me, anyway?” she asked.

“You messed up,” he said simply, part of him enjoying the flash of outrage in those cool blue eyes. He realized she’d slipped up because she was sick and desperate, but facts were facts.

“You got tagged on a security camera at the gas station where you stole the third vehicle. An analyst connected it with the first stolen car and from there it was just a matter of following the breadcrumbs. We were already getting close when you reached Bryson City. There weren’t many places you could go, and we got word of a local reporting an abandoned car in the woods. After that, it was easy.” She hadn’t covered her tracks very well. Little wonder the others had managed to locate the cabin as well.

Georgia didn’t look too happy at the analysis. “Well there you go,” she muttered with a pissed-off expression.

“Your fever’s pretty high,” Briar said. “We’re going to get you looked at as soon as we can get to a safe house. But there’s at least one other person still in the area right now and we’re not sure of the threat level. We can’t move until we get the all clear from our boss.”

Georgia jerked her gaze to Briar, then back to him, her face full of incredulity. “Who’s your boss?”

“Alex Rycroft,” he answered. If she was or had been a government asset, then she’d know who the major players in the intelligence world were and would recognize the name.

She frowned. “From the NSA?
That’s
who you’re both working for now?” Her tone was scathing, as if she thought they’d sold themselves out. And she was right about him at least, because he certainly had.

For her.

“It’s a long story,” he said. And one he would share only after he got some answers of his own.

But now wasn’t the time for that private conversation—if Briar and Rycroft would even allow it. Right now they had to treat Georgia’s symptoms, neutralize any remaining threats in the immediate vicinity before they could get her out of there.

“When’s the last time you ate? Are you hungry? Thirsty?” he asked.

She sighed and leaned back against the brass headboard, looking exhausted all of a sudden. “Thirsty, but I’m not sure anything will stay down.”

“The IV will help, and we’ve got some meds that might help with the nausea.” God, there were so many critical things he was dying to ask her, and yet he was reduced to this banal conversation instead. He strode for the pack he’d left in the corner of the room, took out a bottle of water and two anti-nausea tablets.

Crossing over to the bed, he couldn’t help but notice how stiff she was, how wary her expression. He didn’t like her looking at him that way but understood exactly how she was feeling.

Because the uncertainty and mistrust went both ways.

He didn’t like that either. Was dying for the moment he could begin to peel back the layers and discover who this woman truly was, find out what was real and what had been a lie.

“Here.” Twisting off the cap, he handed it to her with the tablets.

She accepted them, swallowed the pills then divided a look between them. “Look. Unless Rycroft is here to arrest me because he’s got charges pending, you can’t hold me against my will. You both need to let me go. If either of you ever really cared for me at all, you’ll let me out of here and not follow me.”