Eighty-Two

The receiver he’d put in his ear hissed and crackled seconds before Ben’s voice came online. “You ready for this?”

Michael adjusted the straps on his parachute while watching Church do a pre-jump check on Strickland’s rig. He was about to jump out of an airplane with a hapless cop and Livingston Shaw’s pet spy. “I was ready an hour ago.”

“So you keep saying.” Ben chuckled. “If you had your way, you’d have swum to the island hours ago with a KA-bar clenched in your teeth and a live grenade in each fist.”

His partner was right. It was what his instincts were telling him to do. What they always told him to do: Save her. Protect her. He’d been ready to go the second he stepped foot off the plane, and he would have gone if Ben hadn’t been there to stop him.

“There’s no way to tap into the compound’s security feed; I’m going to have to cut the cameras completely, so once you’re in, I can’t be your eyes,” Ben said, going over the plan for what seemed like the fiftieth time. “Give me a check-in when you hit the island and another when you make the mountain. I’ll kill comms and cameras then.”

“Got it,” he said. “What I don’t got is an explanation on why you’re running interference while Lark rides the pine.” When they’d left, Lark had been nothing more than a pair of hulking shoulders hunched over a bank of computer screens, so intent on what he was doing that he hadn’t even looked up when they left.

“I told you, he’s got more important things to do,” Ben said. “Trust me.”

“Not even as far as I could throw you.”

Ben laughed again. “Then trust that I hate my father and take great pleasure in ruining his day.”

Michael felt a smirk coast across his mouth. That was as close to an answer as he was going to get from his partner. “That I do trust,” he said, cutting the mic as soon as Church turned toward him. She’d traded her jeans and Einstein T-shirt for standard-issue FSS garb—dark fatigues and long-sleeved shirt—and her honey-colored hair was pulled away from her exotic-looking face. He remembered what Shaw had said about her. Born in America but raised to hate everything it stood for and then abandoned there by the country that was supposed to be her family’s home. The term issues had to be an understatement.

She approached him, stepping around so she could stand behind him. He moved to turn, not comfortable having her at his back. She grabbed him by the shoulders and stopped him mid-turn. “I need to check your rig,” she said, her tone slightly exasperated, like she was talking to an unreasonable child who was trying her patience.

“I’ll let you do me,” he said, turning against her hands until they were standing face to face, “if you let me do you.”

She pushed a smile onto her face and batted her eyelashes at him, fluttering them around the dark hazel of her eyes. “What would Sabrina think?”

“That I’m right not to trust you,” he deadpanned.

She dropped the act completely and suddenly she was the no-nonsense woman he knew, the medical tech who examined him after each mission. “Just in case you missed it, the enemy is down there,” she said, nodding her head to the side. “He’s got your girl, not me. I’m here to help you get her back.”

He stared at her, could feel Strickland behind him, watching the exchange. “Why?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Let’s take it from the top, shall we? Shaw wants the Maddox boy back. He also wants you and the little incentive program she represents to you intact. That means Sabrina lives.”

Shaw had been content to keep him ignorant of the fact that he not only knew about Sabrina, but that he’d been controlling her for over a year—she’d been his ace in the hole. Now that Michael was aware, Shaw knew that there would be no pulling his strings without her dangling over his head. It was either lose him or save her.

And Livingston Shaw hated to lose.

Church was still talking. “There are too many objectives in this mission for you to hit all your marks alone.” No longer antagonistic, she was now the voice of reason. “You need me.”

“Like a fucking hole in my head,” he muttered, but she was right and they both knew it.

“I’ll make you a deal, O’Shea. I give you my absolute word that you can trust me completely for the next four hours.”

“What if Shaw changes his mind? What if he decides he wants us dead?” Shaw could kill him anytime he wanted, but his death wasn’t the issue. It was always looming, inevitable. But Shaw would need more than a phone code and password to kill Sabrina.

He’d need someone on the ground. Loyal. Capable.

Someone like Church.

He could see that she was conflicted; the stress of it played across her face, but only for an instant. She reached into the long pocket of her fatigues and pulled out her cell, offering it to him. “I can give you four hours—take it or leave it.”

Michael hesitated for only a moment before he took it.