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Gage floored the accelerator on his sport utility, pushing the speed limits in south Atlanta, and peeled off the interstate before he reached the airport. His hands shook.
His hands never shook.
But fear for Sabrina rolled through his body.
Who had set that blast? He wanted to bellow in rage, but that wouldn’t get her back. The need to make every second count forced him to snatch control back into his grasp.
He caught a green light and took two corners until he was on the dead-end street for the Slye Temp offices. A simple, two-story, brick building came into view.
The main floor offices welcomed corporations looking for the best in skilled security, a business front for the underground bunker where Sabrina accepted covert operations in the interest of protecting national security.
Gage should have never given her that first contract.
He whipped his Tahoe around, sliding to a stop and blocking in three of the five vehicles parked in front. The building’s interior, normally dark after business hours, was flush with lights.
Dingo Paddock stepped out with arms crossed and the threat of death in his cold gaze.
All that did was feed the rage monster gaining strength inside of Gage. It wanted out. It wanted blood. It didn’t care who bled right now.
But he couldn’t make the same mistake twice. Not now and not with Dingo or Josh. He’d made a promise to Sabrina. Even if they were never together again, he was going to prove to her that she could trust his word. He never wanted to face her disappointment again, but right now he’d take even that, just to see her standing here alive.
He inhaled a deep breath and reminded himself, never lose sight of the goal.
Opening his door, he climbed out, hands loose and ready to defend himself in case that Aussie’s temper got the best of him.
Don’t make me hurt anyone.
That sure as hell wouldn’t earn him any points with Sabrina.
Dingo shouted, “We can’t reach Sabrina. Where is she?”
Gage had called Sabrina’s assistant, Amanda, and told her he was inbound with intel targeting Sabrina. He knew better than to tell them anything more over the phone. “Did you hear about the explosion downtown tonight?”
“Yes. What about it?”
Gage replied, “Sabrina was there at the explosion site.”
“Where the fuck is she now?” Dingo demanded in a guttural Australian accent, moving forward with a take-no-prisoners attitude sitting on his shoulder.
But a thread of worry had crept into Dingo’s voice.
“Gone.” Gage’s throat constricted with that word. A meteor could have struck the ground between the two of them and no one would have paid it any mind.
Gone. They all knew what that meant in their business. The worst kind of missing-person situation. His heart was beating his chest with the force of a prize fighter.
Dingo exploded with a flurry of curses, striding toward him, ready for a throwdown.
Gage lifted his hands. “Stop, dammit, unless you want her to die.”
Dingo froze, but that momentary magic was good for about three seconds with this agent.
Gage jumped in while he had a chance at getting everyone on the same page. “I’m here to work with you. The less time we spend arguing, the more we can put toward finding her. Someone set an explosion in a parking deck where she’d left her car. They had to be close by so that they could detonate the bomb as soon as she was in the right spot.”
Dingo took in a deep breath, but still looked kicked in the family jewels. “She’s alive then?”
“I believe so.” God, he hoped so.
“What happened?”
“I got there less than sixty seconds after the blast. I scouted the scene and found where I think she landed on a car, but she was too far from the blast point.”
“What do you mean?” Dingo demanded.
“I don’t think they intended to kill her or they’d have let her get inside her car before detonation.” Gage’s mind kept screaming how would they have known it wouldn’t kill her?
“Was she meeting you?” Dingo wanted to know, every word pumped full of suspicion.
Gage rubbed his head, begging for patience with this guy. “Let’s not get sidetracked. This is what happened. I saw her go into that parking deck. I took the stairs just as the explosion rocked the building. When I got to the third floor, I found the burning car, but her shoulder bag was sitting fifty feet away filled with money. She was gone. I found a cracked windshield and a few bloody spots around the car she must have hit, but no large pool of blood. I’m thinking a snatch and grab.”
Dingo’s eyes flickered with the calculations his mind was doing. “What the fuck were you doing there, Laughton?”
He might as well answer this or they wouldn’t get any further along. “One of my people picked up rumors about a contract on Sabrina. Not a hit but a bounty to deliver her, which makes me believe that whoever put the contract out wants her capable of speaking. I went to talk her into going off the grid until I could find out who was pulling the strings. She wouldn’t listen to me ... because of you and Josh.”
Dingo jerked back as if he’d been slapped. He snarled, “Is that all you’ve got? If so, get the hell out of here so we can find her. Unlike you, we don’t have ulterior motives when it comes to Sabrina and every resource we have is now assigned to finding her.”
Gage kept breathing in and out slowly, the way he did when he’d faced torture in the past. Nothing he’d suffered then matched what he was going through now with Sabrina in someone’s filthy hands.
He locked down his control and said, “I have intel. I know you and Josh don’t like me—”
“Don’t trust you,” Dingo interjected.
“Right, but I don’t give a shit. I’ll bed down with the devil if that’s what it takes to get her back. If you’re not willing to work with me, say so now and I’ll go put together my own team. But I believe the odds of getting her back will go up significantly if we can put aside our differences and join forces.”
The Aussie took a moment, but anyone could see that he took every word to heart. “We’ll work with you for now. If I find out anything you’ve said is a lie or that the agency is pulling strings in this, you’ll never get another chance to screw with her. Literally.”
Gage dropped into mission mode, willing to do whatever it took to be successful, even if it meant sucking it up to deal with belligerence. For now, he’d do what was necessary to maintain this tenuous agreement. “Fine.”
Dingo asked, “What’s your intel?”
“It’s in the back.” Gage pressed his key fob to open the liftgate on his Tahoe. He led the way to the rear, where interior lights spilled down over the woman he’d dragged from the scene. Her lumpy body was turned away from them and the air around her reeked of a burnt chemical odor from the bomb blast.
Her clothes looked as if she’d been dragged through the streets, but she was still breathing.
Gage explained, “I found this woman ten feet from the car that had blood on it.”
“Could be her blood.”
“Sabrina had been meeting someone her contact Ziggie set up. I thought this female was some vagrant the kidnappers ignored, but when I rolled her over she was clutching a Walther PPK. No serial number. She’s either part of the plan and got left behind for dead, or she’s another player.”
“Shit,” Dingo muttered.
Nicer than what Gage had said right before he hoisted the unconscious woman over his shoulder and carried her two floors down to his car parked near the stairs. When someone tried to stop him, he’d shouted that there were more casualties.
As the chaos mounted, he’d tossed this one into the back and driven out of the parking garage as sirens headed toward the area.
Gage said, “All those bulges are padding and she’s wearing a silicone mask.”
“Guess it’s a bloody good indication the blast was not intended to kill since this wench survived,” Dingo pointed out. Then he added, “Of course, Sabrina wouldn’t have been padded like this.”
Gage had considered that and didn’t want to be reminded. “This woman needs a medic.”
“Blade’s downstairs. Let’s get her to him.” Dingo stepped closer, staring at the woman. He murmured, “Who the fuck was behind this?”
“There was another body at the scene. White male in his thirties. Had the Orion star pattern scarring.”
Dingo froze. “Fuck.”
The door to the offices opened and a man called over, “What’s up?”
Dingo waved him to the back of the SUV.
Gage recognized this agent from the California mission. Tanner Bodine sounded as if he’d just come off a cattle drive in Texas most of the time.
Other times, there wasn’t a hint of a drawl, like now.
Built like a linebacker and eyes sharp with tension, Tanner walked up to them. “What you got?”
Dingo blew out a breath. “The only lead we might have on finding Sabrina. She’s been grabbed. We need this one awake ASAP.”
The cowboy’s jaw muscle flexed. “Does she need to be restrained?”
“I cuffed her,” Gage told him, “but she’s an operative of some kind so watch yourself. She might have a concussion. Got some cuts. I don’t think anything’s broken, but I didn’t waste time looking closely.”
Everyone backed away to let Tanner roll her over where her wrists were still held with flex-cuffs. Gage had also made damn sure she had no access to a knife or any tool while behind him where he couldn’t see her if she woke up and caught her second wind.
But she was still out cold. Her wrinkled face had made him pause at first, until he decided a second later that she’d put herself into this mess.
Then he’d realized her real face was hidden beneath a professional-level silicone mask.
Tanner picked her up and headed inside.
Gage followed and walked in to find Amanda at the desk that sat outside of Sabrina’s private office. Amanda Talifero looked more like a fit, blond-haired, brown-eyed, college intern than a deadly former MI6 intelligence technician. From what he knew, Sabrina’s assistant could find out anything on anybody, and could kill with the same precision she broke through firewalls.
Gage had created files on most of Sabrina’s people back before the UK mission went down and updated his information as soon as she surfaced again.
He didn’t know everything about all of them. He figured that was because Amanda would be just as good at burying intel as she was at rooting it out. But he knew enough on this group to get through this operation.
Amanda took him in from head to toe, and not in a flattering way. He’d seen that look many times when an adversary sized him up to decide the simplest way to kill him.
The same reaction he got the minute he faced off in enemy territory.
She waited until Dingo stepped inside, then said, “Nick’s on the way.”
Dingo nodded. “Good. What about Josh?”
“He should be here any minute. I caught him before he got to the airport.”
“Call and fill him in anyway so he’s up to speed by the time he gets here. Might give him time to call Trish.”
“Oh, yeah. The wedding.” Amanda was already punching numbers into her phone.
If not for the circumstances, Gage would be glad for the way this bunch was rallying to find Sabrina. But at the moment, he had nothing to be happy about.
Tanner took the woman downstairs where Slye kept an infirmary. Gage hadn’t been there, but he knew how Sabrina operated ... when it came to business.
He clearly didn’t know squat about the rest of her mind or he might have talked her into going with him tonight.
He’d suffered the entire two years she’d been missing and never wanted to go through that again.
Like now?
Exactly. Why couldn’t she understand that he knew how to keep her safe and would not stand by and allow anyone to harm her?
Good intel wasn’t worth shit if no one acted on it though.
Where had he gone so far wrong with her? Maybe by not admitting the truth, that he couldn’t walk away with any hope of ever feeling the same way about another woman.
That she’d become too important to him.
Sabrina’s words drifted back to him. “... allow for a relationship, not a true one.”
He had no argument for that.
With no idea where the stairwell to the underground bunker was hidden, he stepped over and hit the button for the elevator to follow Tanner.
Dingo called out, “Yo! Over here. That won’t work without one of us.”
Gage turned back as voices rumbled from the front office.
Dingo walked away, heading for the rear area of the ground level offices.
Josh appeared with a phone at his ear and dressed in a tailored suit that had to run four figures. He belonged in Atlanta’s financial district negotiating million-dollar deals, but Sabrina claimed looks were deceiving with that one.
Striding quickly, Josh tossed Gage a keep-up-or-stay-out-of-the-way look and vanished down the hall behind Dingo, who turned into a room on the right.
When Gage got there, he entered a refined conference room clearly designed with corporate clients in mind. He found a spot on the opposite side of a long conference table from Josh, who stalked up and down the other side.
Dingo was clearing a white board and saying, “Let’s start with what we know.”
Gage said, “Rikker. What intel do you have on him after California?”
Dingo and Josh turned to him. Dingo said, “The helo pilot was shot and somehow Rikker got out of the bird as it was crashing. He used a makeshift rope to get off the building roof. That was a rope I’d left after extracting Valene via the roof of that four-story building when Maxx Navarro captured her. That rope didn’t go all the way to the ground. We only used it to reach the next floor down. I was surprised no one caught Rikker on foot after a two-story drop. He should have broken an ankle, foot, knee, something.”
Josh snapped a question at Gage. “What have you got on Rikker, or are you keeping that close to the vest, too?”
These two had butted heads with Gage every minute since that fucked-up op in the UK. He understood, but it didn’t stop him from getting pissed off every time that job was shoved in his face. He hadn’t burned them and he still hunted the person who had, but arguing would only delay him from finding Sabrina.
He said, “Let’s make one thing clear. Any intel I have that will help us find her is on the table. I expect the same from you two and the rest of your team.” He allowed a brief pause for someone to get mouthy. When no one said a word, he added, “Rikker is still stateside. No sign of him leaving and he was definitely injured. We found a dead nurse in Charlotte, North Carolina, who I believe treated him. I’m guessing Sabrina knew about that and thought she was meeting someone else he’d gotten to for help.”
“What makes you think that?” Josh asked. “We’ve had no intel on Rikker since California.”
No point in skating around the truth.
Gage explained how he’d had Sabrina under surveillance and followed her to the restaurant on Baker Street. He pulled her small handbag out of his coat and dropped it on the table. “There’s thirty thousand in there. It was left on the ground.”
The Aussie glared fireballs at him, but didn’t say a word about Gage stalking Sabrina. He’d deny it if that didn’t have a kernel of truth. He had been stalking her, while keeping his ear to the ground, since she returned from California.
Gage finished by explaining, “I had no idea she was meeting a contact. When she realized I wasn’t the person she’d been set up to meet, she took off.”
“What contact?” Tanner asked, walking in on the tail end of that. He plopped down in the first chair he found.
Scratching his forehead, Gage said, “Someone sent by a snitch named Ziggie. Add that to your board.”
Dingo did, then he asked, “Anyone know that snitch?”
Gage mulled it over. “I don’t know him, but I’ve heard his name once. Back before the UK job.”
Tension crackled at the mention of the elephant in the room. Gage spent his days swimming in tension, so he pushed on. “I’ll put someone on finding Ziggie.”
“No CIA is in on this,” Josh said and Dingo nodded.
Shit, what was it going to take to get these two to meet him halfway? “I’m only using two people I’ll stake my life on.”
“This is Sabrina’s life.”
“Even more important,” Gage shot right back. He shared as little as possible in his world, but he’d hand over enough to get through to this bunch. “We need the information they can resource.”
Tanner asked, “We need to know who you’re talking about.”
Evidently, Gage’s answer hadn’t made the cut.
Damn this group. Gage had survived a long time in a business with a limited life expectancy by not spilling everything he knew to anyone. “I’m not burning them. All I can tell you is these are two people who can be trusted.”
“So you say,” Dingo spit out.
Same words Sabrina had spouted earlier.
Gage wiped his mouth, buying time. What could they do if he refused to share the names of the only two people in the CIA he trusted?
Those two would die before giving Gage up.
Was he supposed to just hand over their identities without any hesitation?
Taking in the hard faces watching him, Gage said in a level tone, “We can argue about who is who, or we can work on finding Sabrina.”
Dingo put the marker down and crossed his arms. “See, this is the problem we have with you, Laughton. We’ll drag every snitch out of their holes to get what we need to find Sabrina, but you’re still playing ‘he who holds the most cards wins.’ We don’t trust you. Sabrina doesn’t trust you. If she did, she would have considered what you told her tonight.”
Just shove that dagger deeper into his heart.
Gage’s chest muscles ached. He debated leaving and going after her on his own. One simple fact stopped him from making that leap.
Despite how much this bunch pissed him off, they were one hell of a team.
And every one of them would rush into a hail of bullets to protect Sabrina. He might not like it, but he needed them.
They needed him, too. Now was the time to build a bridge where none had ever been before. He had been Sabrina’s handler and she was the person between him and her team.
Josh stepped around the table and paused next to the door. “Go, Laughton. If you’re going to choose what you share, we don’t fucking need you.”
Dingo stepped up next to him and Tanner stood as well.
All three faces held an identical message.
Gage walked over to them and tried to reason in the face of hostility.
“Let’s get this out of the way. I realize the three of you were in the UK with Sabrina,” Gage started and pointedly said to Josh, “I know you lost a contact you had become close to during the UK job. Nothing can fix that or bring her back, but I did not burn your team.” He took in all three when he added, “I’m not saying this to earn your friendship. I care deeply about Sabrina and I know all of you do, too. I wouldn’t have put her in danger in the UK if someone had held a gun to my head. As for those two people who work covertly for me, I am not throwing them under the bus any more than I would have handed Sabrina and her team to a monster. I wouldn’t ask any of you to expose one of your resources just to prove a point. Exposing my people isn’t going to help find Sabrina. In fact, doing so will slow us down.”
Dingo frowned, looking unsure what he should say. Josh’s crossed arms flexed as he fought through some decision. Tanner had that unconcerned look that played so well for him in the field, but Gage knew he was just as invested as the other two.
He’d offered an olive branch, but was not going to beat his head against the wall to do this. Not when Sabrina was in the wind.
When no one said a word, he bit down on his disgust and gave them one last chance, then he was done. “Focus on the end goal, men. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not hiding intel. We have a better chance of finding her if all of us combine our efforts. But if this is going to be a constant pissing contest, I’ll leave right now rather than waste seconds I need for hunting her.”
Tanner, Dingo and Josh exchanged a look that Gage couldn’t decipher.
Fuck it. They had one minute to make up their minds.
That would be one more minute Sabrina remained in the hands of a killer.
Amanda stuck her head into the room. “If you can put your dicks away long enough to question the woman, Blade says she’s coming around.”
