Dangerous Assignment (Aegis Group Book 4) Read online

  “There’s a partially furnished apartment upstairs,” she said.

  He closed and locked the door behind him and then checked the windows.

  They could be found at any second.

  “We need to make contact. Get word back to Aegis so they can try to find Ethan.” Luke wouldn’t mourn his friend until someone slapped a toe tag on the body. Until then, Ethan was MIA. Probably in a hospital somewhere, if they were lucky.

  Abigail turned, wrapping her arms around herself and walked a few steps away.

  For every one thing he knew about her, there were easily a thousand things he didn’t. She’d lied to him, let him believe—albeit not very convincingly—she was just another bodyguard for hire. He had no idea who or what she really was. But his gut said to trust her even as his head started spinning doubts.

  “We’re going to get through this,” he said—for both their sake’s.

  7.

  Abigail turned, studying Luke’s profile against the windows. He watched the front of the building while she kept an eye on the back. It felt like hours they’d stayed like this, watching, waiting for someone to find them. A time or two they heard sirens, but as of yet nothing had come close to their position.

  The Jordan police would want her dead for a number of reasons.

  There was only one out she could see, and it would only work for one of them.

  Him.

  “Luke?” She turned toward him, crossing into the living space.

  “Hm?” He tilted his head toward her, but he never took his eyes off the road.

  Bless him, he thought she was innocent. That she was an American spy of all things.

  “I need you to listen to me.” She licked her lips.

  How she wished things could be different. Playing Abigail, having Ethan and Luke at her back had been…the most normal her life had seen in years. Maybe a decade. But she wasn’t this woman, and her life was so far into the realm of weird there was no hope for her.

  Luke turned his head. Maybe it was her tone that got his attention, but she could feel his gaze on her in the near darkness.

  “They’re going to find us. They won’t let me leave, but if you tell them everything you know—they’ll make it easier on you to be released.”

  “We’re getting out of here,” Luke said with complete certainty. She wanted to believe him, but she knew the score. How these things went down. And he couldn’t save her. Being her hero would get him killed.

  “No, we’re not. Luke—I didn’t lie. I’m not a spy. Anymore.” She swallowed. Her training made the next sentence hard to speak. It was the one thing she was never supposed to admit. To anyone. For any reason. But she would not let this man take the fall for her choices. Breaking conditioning was as hard as learning it, but for this heroic man, she’d do it. “I am former Mossad. I have been since I was… A long time ago.”

  For a few moments neither moved or spoke. She didn’t so much as swallow.

  She’d played the part of an American so well, in part because she was. But she was also Mossad.

  “Who are you working for?” He hadn’t shifted, but there was a difference in his voice.

  “No one.”

  “Was—the explosion?”

  “It wasn’t mine,” she said quickly. Abigail clasped her hands together. This is where things got tricky. “I was going to kill the Smiths. I was waiting for the right time. They’re—they’re trying to sell the components for what could be the worst terrorist attack the world has ever seen. I’m trying—I was trying to stop them. I was going to kill them. Just them. No casualties. No mistakes. I would never have done what happened tonight, but the police won’t see it that way.”

  Luke held up his hand and shook his head. It was a lot to throw at him.

  “Your mom? Bacon? Were those lies?”

  “No.” She swallowed. “Those were true. It’s a long story.”

  “You didn’t set the explosives? Am I supposed to believe you?”

  “No, I didn’t set the explosives.” She shook her head. “It’s not how we—I mean, Mossad works.”

  “Is your real name Abigail?”

  “No.”

  “What is it? Who are you?” He turned to face her, his hands curled into fists.

  Anger. He was angry. But he wasn’t like most men. It was a simmering, barely-there undercurrent. Because he’d grown up in an environment where he had to go unnoticed. Keep the anger packed in. Oh, how she understood that.

  “No one has called me by my real name in a long, long time.” The last person to utter it had been a traitor. She tipped her chin up, never shrinking from the weight of his glare. “My real name is Yael.”

  “Yael.” He spat the name. “Why?”

  “Why? Which part?” She crossed to a decorative bench and sat, years of covert work weighing on her. The things she’d done…

  “The Smiths are bad people, but why them? Why you? What did they want to attack?”

  “It’s a long story.” She slid her hands between her thighs like she used to do, and stared at the floor, but it wasn’t the tile she saw, it was her history. Her past. “The short version?”

  “And then the full story.”

  “If there’s time.”

  “There’ll be time.”

  “I was living in Palestine as an American contractor. My handler…he sold me out. Someone got to him. Blackmailed him into giving up not only myself, but a dozen other Mossad agents and information. They died. All of them. Except me. Because whoever was pulling Zach’s leash wanted to humiliate me. Use me. They made it clear that they could get to my mother if I didn’t do exactly what they asked. So I faked my death. And I’ve been working my way through those I knew were connected to the operation for the last two years. That’s why I haven’t seen her, why I can’t talk to her. I’m trying to protect her.”

  “You’ve been killing those people, haven’t you? The ones you think blackmailed you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been killing people you think should be put down.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

  “Nothing else matters.”

  “Who were these people?”

  “Terrorists. Cell leaders. Spies. Bad people. But they were still people. The Smiths were the last on my list of those connected to my blackmailing. I believe some of the information they were trying to sell was bounced around between those involved, until the Smiths got it. I’m sorry I lied to you, but I’d do it again. If they thought I was alive, they’d have killed my mother.” For all their wrongs, each life was still a life. Eliminating them based on an order or her own motivation didn’t change the fact that she was a killer. Had been since the beginning.

  Luke stared at her, the darkness hiding his features.

  “I need to tell you more.” She licked her lips. “I need to tell you some very…sensitive information.”

  This was her Hail Mary, as the Americans liked to say. She couldn’t trust her own people, but him? Luke? She could trust him.

  “I don’t want to know.” He shook his head.

  “Luke—”

  “No!”

  “Luke, there’s a nuclear warhead at stake here.”

  “Jesus. No more!”

  “Remember all of this. When they find us, tell them. My fate is sealed. Tell them.” She’d made peace a long time ago with death. There were other clandestine combatants who could leave field work, have a normal life. Families. But not her. She’d done too much. Too many people would want her dead a second time.

  “If you’ve been dead—how did they know so much about you?” he asked.

  “I…don’t know.”

  His question sparked her brain out of the stupor she’d been mired in.

  “Think about it,” he said, pacing away from the window. “That blast went off, and there were cops there almost immediately. For them to be there that fast, they had to have been close. And they already kne
w. There were no questions, no confusion. They knew exactly what’d happened and who was at fault. That’s what’s been bugging me.”

  “Someone knew I would be here, and set the explosion up—”

  “So you would take the fall.”

  A wave of nausea hit her so hard she couldn’t draw a single breath.

  That meant there was someone else out there who knew she was alive. Someone she didn’t know about. Someone who probably knew about her mother. She leaned forward.

  It had almost been over.

  She’d tasted freedom in Luke’s arms.

  For a moment, she’d wondered what came next.

  There would be no next. No freedom.

  The Smiths were the last people she knew of who could connect to the operation that’d burned her.

  What had she missed? Who had she missed?

  If she died, if they killed her, what would happen to her mother? Was she even alive still?

  “I need to find a phone.” She stood, shoving a hand through her hair. The frantic need to hear her mother’s voice gnawed at her.

  “Abigail—Yael—wait.”

  “I have to find out where my mother is.” If she was alive. If she was okay.

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I make regular payments to a photographer to document—it doesn’t matter. I need to make a phone call.”

  “There’s no one out there.” He gestured to the window.

  “Curfew. Shit.” She paced to the kitchen, then back toward Luke. She’d known about the curfew. Had warned Ethan and Luke about it last night when Ethan wanted to go out for supplies.

  Luke met her at the bench, his gaze narrowed, his sensual lips tightly compressed. What she wouldn’t give for him to look at her like he’d looked at Abigail again. She’d lost that. But then, had she ever really had it?

  “Now, start at the beginning and tell me the long version.”

  She swallowed. How many times had she wanted someone to know? To hear her story? And now, she wanted to be—to do—anything but that.

  Luke had a cramp in his back and he’d lost the feeling in some of his toes, but he couldn’t move. Abigail—no, Yael—her voice wove a spell over him as she recounted in broad strokes the events leading up to tonight. She rattled off names and places with ease, never once having to pause for details.

  She was one bad ass bitch.

  He meant it with the greatest respect.

  Sure, he was still pissed that he’d believed they were on the same side, that he’d been fooled by her, but when it came down to it, they wanted the same things.

  Peace.

  Safety for others.

  To put an end to bad people.

  For fear to be eradicated.

  She’d made some wrong choices by his book, but she made them with the best intentions. Right down to planning to assassinate the Smiths.

  Whoever had burned her, they must regret it now. She was a one-woman army, with the skills, knowledge, and tools to do everything she set out to do.

  He’d known she was something special the moment he’d laid eyes on her. It was in the way she’d looked at him—she’d stripped him down to his core and weighed his worth. She was good, in a shades of gray kind of way. Abigail did bad things for a good reason. It was a truth he understood, something he got.

  But there had to be more to it.

  Her mouth stopped moving, and like the first time off a boat, he was left feeling a little wonky without its easy cadence and musical quality.

  “What about the bomb?” She hadn’t mentioned it again.

  “It’s complicated. When you get home, call your CIA people, whoever you know, and tell them a Mossad agent knew about a WWII nuclear warhead hidden near DC. They’ll ask the right people questions.”

  “But you won’t tell me who they should ask?”

  “I can’t betray the people I swore to protect. Even if they turned against me. It’s not about them…it’s about me. If I lose that foundation of who I am…” She shook her head.

  Luke got it.

  In battle, during war, it wasn’t the time to start questioning what you believed in. When a soldier started having doubts, when they started to second-guess what they were doing, bad things happened. Until this was over, until Abigail had completed her mission, she couldn’t realign her allegiances.

  “Can I ask a question?” There was just one more thing he wanted to know.

  “Can you?”

  “May I ask a question?” He rolled his eyes.

  “You may. I may not be able to answer it. I won’t betray—”

  “How old are you?” He had a guess, but for her to have done everything she’d told him, plus years of stuff she hadn’t…nothing added up.

  “Thirty-four. I was recruited younger than most. I have been a Mossad agent for…” She leaned back, resting her head against the wall. She’d settled on the day bed after pacing. “Sixteen years.”

  Half her life had been in the service of someone else.

  “You were eighteen?” He knew he was staring. He could feel the breeze from the window against the back of his throat.

  “Seventeen, officially, but the training began when I was sixteen. I have been presumed dead for the last two years.” She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced away.

  She’d been a kid. A child. And someone had turned her into…a weapon. And then they’d thrown her to the wolves. What kind of person would take a teenage girl and make a spy out of her? At sixteen he’d known responsibility, but he’d also kicked it with his friends. Played ball. Got in trouble. She hadn’t had that.

  Had she ever had a life? A time when she wasn’t someone else?

  He got to his feet, stretching to work some of the feeling back into his body, and crossed to the day bed. She didn’t look at him, but he didn’t doubt she was aware of everything he did.

  Mossad agents were renowned for being the best. And if she’d been one for half her life before faking her death and becoming a vigilante, then he doubted there wasn’t a thing in the room or on his person she couldn’t catalogue and kill him with in a pinch.

  Luke sat next to her. He pulled her stiff body against his, hugging her.

  How many times had she needed to be held by someone who knew her—the real her—and been left cold?

  Her job, he understood. At least in theory. He’d been a SEAL for twelve years. In the name of serving his country he’d done things he didn’t always agree with. But when you were a soldier—a spy—you did what you were told, and trusted your commanding officer knew what the hell they were doing. This solo, vigilante shit made sense, but he couldn’t get behind it. No one person should be judge and executioner, no matter how guilty the target was. On the other hand, in her position, if someone threatened his mama, wouldn’t he put a stop to the threat?

  The world wasn’t black and white.

  He’d lived in those same shades of gray at times.

  Was she guilty?

  Yes.

  Would he turn her in?

  Hell no.

  Over his dead body.

  He kissed the top of her head.

  This was it then.

  He’d made his choice. Whether or not it was the correct one, it was the right one for him. He said a silent prayer for Ethan, wherever he was, and squeezed Abigail a little tighter.

  “When it gets light I’ll find us a phone. My guys can get us out of here.” He rested his cheek against the top of her head.

  “You should go without me. They won’t stop searching.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No. But it means you’d get out of here.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” Plus, he had a team of guys who were without a doubt already looking for him. Hell, all he needed to do was make contact and get extraction orders. Zain and the Admiral would have the rest tied up in a neat little bow.

  “You can’t always be the hero, Luke.”

&
nbsp; He stared at the shadows. She hit the nail on the head there.

  Did he want to rescue her? Was he looking to be her hero? Or was this about doing the right thing?

  When he’d met her, he’d seen someone capable. Confident. Skilled. She was all of that, but she was also in a pinch at the moment. He still believed helping her was the right thing to do. If she was who—and what—she said she was, then she’d never get a fair trial here if she was charged with the bombing.

  “I can’t save you from what you’ve done, but I can at least make sure you don’t go down for something you didn’t do. Besides,” he drew in a deep breath, bracing himself for the next thought, “you’re my best chance at finding out who did this. Who killed Ethan.”

  “He could still be alive.”

  “Maybe.”

  Her hands slipped around his waist and she finally hugged him back, her body relaxing against his.

  She was a remarkable woman.

  “What should I call you?” he asked.

  “Abigail. It’s better to perpetuate the idea of the alias.”

  “You have me all curious about where you’ve been. What you’ve done.” He peered down at her. Who she’d killed…

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I know, but it still makes me wonder. Like—did you ever have to be a stripper to get access to some high rolling guy?”

  She stared at him, her expression flat.

  He grinned and kissed the tip of her nose.

  So she was Mossad. A very dangerous Israeli spy. No, “clandestine combatant” was their preferred term. He was a veteran SEAL who’d done his share of black ops and now kicked ass for a living these days.

  They weren’t all that different.

  “Do you know what time it is? I’d check, but I can’t take my eyes off you.”

  “You’re terrible.” Her voice was so deadpan it was funny.

  She shook her head and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “You like me this way.” He stroked her arm. The desert chill was seeping in, finally.

  She didn’t deny his statement.

  “We’re going to get out of this,” he said again. “You’re going to see your mom.”