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Gabriel – Three Months Later
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Gabe stared out at the lake, watching the break of yet another dawn in the Pacific northwest. The air was still. Chilly. Fog hovered just above the water like a ghostly blanket of white and grey, suffused with just the lightest tinge of reddish orange, a stark contrast to the deep purplish-blues and greens of the surrounding ridge.
Peaceful. Quiet. Not at all indicative of the maelstrom taking place in his head. Or his chest.
It was hard to believe it was all over.
It was even harder to believe the way things had actually gone down. By the time his team got to him, Virginia was long gone. Christos, the bodies of his live-in staff, and at least a dozen armed men lay dead or dying, including Darius’s enforcers.
He was taken away for medical care and debriefing, then released after a week. The events of that night were sketchy, but from what he’d been able to piece together, someone had sent out an SOS to his team on their secure line. When neither he nor Mancini responded, Pixie escalated to Silas, and Dawson assembled a team. Shortly afterward, a clean-up crew was brought in, his team was disbanded, and Silas, the fucker, was unavailable and unable or unwilling to answer his calls.
No one would tell him a goddamn thing about Virginia, not even whether she was dead or alive.
Mancini, he was told, had been life-flighted out. His injuries had been more severe, but he was expected to make a full recovery.
It had been Pixie who had told him the stuff that didn’t make it onto the official report when he went to pick up Fred, including the fact that Mancini had confided to her that it had been Virginia who’d saved his life, too.
Pixie also told him she was leaving her job with the government to work for a private organization so she could be close to Mancini and help him with his recovery. Before she left, however, she quietly forwarded the classified address of the hospital where Mancini would be for the next several weeks.
Unable to contact Silas, Gabe headed there looking for answers. They didn’t want to let him in at first, but one of the guys, a younger SEAL who’d been a medic on one of his former teams, recognized him and personally escorted him to Mancini’s room.
Mancini didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. “What took you so long?” he said by way of greeting.
Gabe looked around, taking in the surroundings in the blink of an eye, maybe two. It was a nice place, nothing like a standard VA facility. With the exception of some basic hospital equipment, it could have passed for a four-star hotel room.
“Pixie didn’t want to give you up.”
Mancini smiled. “She’s a romantic at heart. I knew she’d give in eventually.”
“You and her, huh?”
“Yeah, she’s the real deal,” he laughed. “I didn’t see it coming, which is kind of embarrassing, given what I do. But you didn’t come to talk to me about that. Want a drink?”
Without waiting for an answer, Mancini maneuvered his wheelchair over to a desk, opened a deep drawer, and extracted a bottle and two glasses.
“Are you supposed to be drinking?”
“No, but it helps.” He poured them both a few fingers. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? Virginia turning out to be Tenebris. I didn’t see that one coming, either. Pix says it’s because I’m sexist.” He chuckled. “I think it means it’s time for me to retire.”
“I’m trying to find her. Nobody will tell me a goddamn thing.”
“It’s protocol. The mission’s over. Everything’s been scrubbed or swept under the rug. Why do you want to find her?”
That was a question Gabe had been asking himself, too. “Because I have to.”
Mancini inclined his head and considered him thoughtfully. “You want to know why she threw away ten years to save your sorry ass.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Mancini turned back to the desk, opened a smaller drawer, and extracted a thumb drive which he held out to Gabe.
“What’s this?”
“Everything I was able to dig up on Virginia Miller. It’s not much, but it’s the most you’re going to find. Pixie deleted everything else from the server.”
“Why would you do this?”
Mancini smiled. “Because deep down, maybe I’m a little bit of a romantic, too. Hey, for whatever it’s worth, man, good luck.”
Offering his thanks, Gabe took the drive and made the trip home in record time. He spent the next several days pouring through the files. There was just enough truth peppered among the lies to make it believable, but it was impossible to determine how much of it was Virginia’s truth and how much had been borrowed from others.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“Fred, how do you feel about a road trip?”
Over the next several weeks, he and Fred visited the neighborhood where Virginia had supposedly grown up and asked around. Some people vaguely remembered a young girl adopted by a local family who might have been named Virginia—though it could have been Valerie or Victoria—who’d lived there for a short time, but the family had been quiet and private and kept to themselves.
He checked out a half dozen German Shepherd breeders who raised and trained dogs for police and military service. Only two had been active and operational during the time Virginia was a kid. One older guy did remember a kennel owner who had given all his dogs exclusively German names, but didn’t know about any children and the breeder had been dead for more than thirty years.
He wasn’t even certain that his Virginia was the same woman who’d married Robert Miller. The Las Vegas preacher who’d officiated the small ceremony said the woman in the photos Gabe showed him might have been her, but he couldn’t say for sure, he’d performed so many, and it had been so long ago.
By the time Gabe returned to his cabin, the only thing he knew was that everything he thought he’d known was wrong.
Well, not everything. The details—the whats and wheres—of her past might not be accurate, but the pain he’d glimpsed in her eyes had been very real. She had been hurt by Darius Kristikos, hurt badly enough to become someone else and spend more than a decade trying to get close enough to bring him down. And she’d thrown it all away to save him before disappearing.
That’s what stayed with him. What gnawed at him day and night.
It would have been so easy for her to walk away. To achieve the objective she had been working toward for ten fucking years. In the end, neither one of them had succeeded. Christos was dead and the likelihood that Darius would ever pay for his sins was gone with it.
He wasn’t sure he even cared anymore.
“Where are you, Virginia?” he whispered into the silence. “Who are you?”
Fred nuzzled his hand at the mention of her name. He missed her, too.
The hair at the back of his neck prickled, letting him know he wasn’t alone.
“What the fuck do you want?” Gabe said without turning around.
“Nice to see you, too, Saint.”
Fucking Silas. “Where the fuck were you, Si? Why didn’t you return any of my calls?”
“There was a situation.”
Gabe’s response was a grunt. Yeah, he bet there was. Something always warranted the attention of Homeland Security, and the post-mission inquiries of a former SEAL commander didn’t register on the priority list. Especially when his mission had gone full FUBAR.
“You don’t watch the news much, do you?”
Another grunt. The only news Gabe was interested in wouldn’t be coming through the satellite feed of major networks. He couldn’t care less about what was happening in the world.
“Darius Kristikos is dead.”
Except that. “What?”
“His body was found floating off the coast of his private island in Greece.”
A tingle started at the base of Gabe’s spine and worked upward. “It’s him? Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“What happened?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Silas mused. “After Christos’s death, Darius retreated to his island and cut off all communication with the outside world to grieve. Or, at least that’s what we believed. Security cameras in the Korfos airport captured this shortly before the body was discovered. Remind you of anyone?”
Gabe looked at the image Silas held out to him. It was a partial shot, blown up, not very clear. A woman with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing sunglasses and a sundress looking every bit the typical tourist. But he recognized the curve of her neck, the one he had kissed and nibbled so thoroughly. Recognized the determined set of that stubborn jaw.
His heart began to pound and blood thundered in his veins. It was Virginia. She was alive. She’d done it. She’d done the impossible. She’d taken out Darius Kristikos.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Silas said, amusement coloring his voice. “The flight manifest identified her as Vivian Michaels.”
Vivian Michaels.
“Where is she now?”
Silas’s face sobered. “That, we don’t know. She never actually boarded the plane. We think—I think—this picture, the name, was a message. For you.”
“A message for me,” Gabe echoed.
“She’s too good at what she does to allow herself to be captured on camera unless she wants to be.”
“Did you know?” Gabe asked.
“That Virginia Miller was Tenebris? No. No one knew that.”
Someone knew. That level of immersion didn’t happen in a vacuum.
“What happens now, Silas? And don’t give me that bullshit about need to know. I need to know.”
“Darius’s unexpected demise has left a big hole. There’s a lot of scrambling and confusion with people trying to fill it.”
“And you’re going to take advantage of that.”
Silas grinned. “You bet your hairy frog ass we are. If you ever want in, give me a call.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got a mission of my own.”
“Thought you might say that. For what it’s worth, good luck.”
“Thanks, Si.”
After Silas left, Gabe felt a renewed sense of purpose. Virginia had survived. She’d taken out Darius. And she’d wanted him to know.
The knowledge gave him hope. That sense of purpose that had been flagging sparked back to life. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. Now the real mission began.
And he knew just who to call to get started.