Chapter Twenty-Six

Liz moved to the other side of her dad as they entered the kitchen. Slugger had switched on her creepy-guy radar, but if he was there to protect them, then she’d comply with his orders. That didn’t mean she had to like his bossy-as-hell attitude. Might not bother her dad. But sure bothered her.

“I’m glad you were able to escape Coercion Ten. From what Mitch and the others have said, they’re not a very nice group.” Awkwardly, she hugged her dad once again. Maybe this was the time for them to reconnect. Maybe she’d been wrong in her judgment of him throughout the years. “I hope they didn’t hurt you.”

There was no return tenderness this time. Instead, he grabbed hold of her short hair, fisting it tighter and tighter in his hand till he gave a final yank and released.

Just like years ago, she felt the shift in demeanor. The moment nice became mean. The moment she needed to become small and invisible. Swallowing the sharp pain, she remembered what she’d learned when she was twelve—always stay more than an arm’s length away from him.

“So, tell me what you’ve been up to besides this, Elizabeth,” he said. “I hear tell you’ve got a lot of people protecting you.”

“How many?” Slugger asked.

Thuds and shattering glass and the crash of a large piece of furniture hitting the floor sounded from upstairs.

She jumped, heart pounding with surprise, insides trembling with a flash of fear. “What’s going on?”

“Watch what the hell you’re doing up there,” her dad shouted. “We may need some of that equipment.”

Why would he be the one talking about the equipment? Shouldn’t that be the OPAQUE guy’s concern?

Slugger took a step toward the stairs. “Boss, you want me to—”

“No! Leave the son of a bitch to his work.” Her dad clenched his jaw. “He knows what he’s looking for.”

“Who…who’s up there?” Glancing back and forth between her dad and Slugger, she realized no one was answering her. And she’d picked up on the word “boss.” What did that mean? Why had Slugger called her dad “boss?” “Are there other OPAQUE agents in the house?”

Again no one answered.

Pressing his earpiece button, Slugger moved near the door as he answered someone from somewhere about something. His expression seemed even more ominous now. Why did him having an earpiece scare her? Mitch and the others used one. That never bothered her. But something about Slugger didn’t quite seem the same as the men who’d risked their lives protecting her ever since Sanibel.

Her dad slid his arm across her shoulders. “You’re okay. That’s just a little housekeeping going on upstairs.”

“Sounded more like trashing the place,” she said.

“By the way, punkin’, how many OPAQUE agents have been guarding you? Four? Six? Eight?”

“Four.” She tried to move out of his casual hold, but he tightened his grip on her.

“How many of them headed to the boat?”

“Four.”

“All men?”

“Yes.”

Slugger smirked then raised his eyebrows as he deliberately moistened his lips. “That’s a shame. I was hoping the lovely Cat would be here.”

“Looks like you’ll have to wait till next time to try out your moves.” Her father nodded in the direction of the boat. “Let them know.”

The man clicked his earpiece mic. “Four incoming your way.”

What the hell was going on? She felt as if she’d just been interrogated. And, for some reason, the word incoming sounded ominous. Why? What was it about all this that didn’t seem to make sense?

Pushing her father’s hand from her shoulder, she turned out of his grasp and stepped back. Where could she go? She glanced at the open living room only a few steps away, but the kitchen counters were a barrier.

Her father opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “You want anything, Elizabeth?”

“No. I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks, though.”

He laughed then gulped down half the beer. “Still always the polite one, aren’t you? Your mother was good at teaching you manners. Too bad she wasn’t as good at being a wife.”

Fear settled in Liz’s chest. Fear as strong as when she was ten years old and in trouble. Well, she wasn’t ten anymore. “I won’t stand for you putting my mother down. She was sweet and considerate. Always trying to make things better for us. She did the best she—”

Her father threw the now empty beer bottle full force at the stove. The bottle smashed into jagged pieces. Liz screamed, jerked back, covered her face, as the oven’s tempered glass shattered into a multitude of pebble-sized lumps. Glass scattered across the floor in every direction.

“Your mother was nothing but a prim and proper conniving bitch. She never loved me.” He grabbed Liz’s wrist. “Hell, I’d have been better off without her when I went into Witpro.”

“Let me go.” She grappled with his hand, kicked his shin, stomped his foot.

“Don’t fight me, Elizabeth. Don’t make me hurt you.” He intensified his hold. “And don’t think I won’t. You’re nothing to me but a mouth to feed. Not even my own kid. You. Mean. Nothing.”

The words hit her like frigid water on a hot, humid day. Woke her up with sudden awareness before the quick feeling of clammy stickiness coated her face. First, Drake had said he might be her dad. Now the man she’d called father all her life had said she meant nothing to him. One man had loved her mother. One had just slandered the same woman. Who was her father? Who?

She felt alone. Empty. Nobody. Like a sinkhole had open beneath her and she was plummeting hundreds of thousands of feet to oblivion.

“How can you say I’m nothing? I’m your daughter.” The quiver in her voice exposed the betrayal she felt. The need for a parent’s love.

“Nope. You’re just someone I’ve been grooming for years to use for CT’s benefit.” He stared at her without compassion. “The promise of you and your connections are what helped me rise through the ranks. Ain’t that right, Slugger?”

Slugger nodded as he kicked the main pile of glass off to the sides. Pieces clumped in even smaller piles. Pieces bouncing farther under the cabinet overhangs.

“Coercion Ten? You’ve been part of them all these years?” she asked.

“Ever since their first visit. The first time I put you and your mother in that safe room.”

“Why? Why would you join them when you’d testified against the mob?” Her panic was rising. Stifling. She could barely grab her next breath. “You did the right thing before. Why turn bad?”

“CT offered me a lucrative deal in exchange for my wormhole into OPAQUE. At the time, Drake’s brother-in-law was head of OPAQUE. Of course, little did we know just how important my connection to Drake would turn out.” He huffed as if in triumph as his grip on her arm seemed to hit all the pressure points. “Through the years I became more valuable to CT. Got them to see the value in using you in later years. Hell, CT even paid for your college.”

The idea that she’d been groomed for years sat in her mouth like the putrid aftertaste of spoiled milk. But that was the past. Now and the future were all that mattered. She needed to escape. Get away. Warn the others.

“You did better than any of us could have hoped. Isn’t that right, Slugger?”

Slugger nodded again, gave her an up-and-down glance. “That’s right, boss. She’s a prize.”

Her dad shot him a disgusted look then cleared his throat. “You’ve made excellent connections in the world of money and politics, Elizabeth. Ones that give you an in on lots of fronts. And you did it all yourself. That is, until your last job.”

How did he know about her last job? What did he know? “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That publishing house you worked for…the big sign-on bonus…the assignments in Arizona…the office in Chicago. That was nothing but a CT front till you got too nosy. That’s when things got messy with that woman.”

His words stopped Liz cold in her fight to free herself. Messy? “You? You killed my informant?”

“Not me personally.” He glanced at Slugger.

She felt sick, like she might throw up. “But you planned all of this?”

“Right down to emptying your bank account. Once I had CT run a DNA test on you and me, I knew for sure you weren’t my daughter. After that, you were just a means to my bank account.”

“A DNA test? How? When?” Witpro. CT. Now DNA. How many more crazy things had happened in her life without her knowledge?

“Remember when you cut your hand peeling potatoes? I grabbed a clean cloth and helped you stop the bleeding?”

“I remember. You bought new knives for the kitchen a couple weeks after my mother died. Said I should peel potatoes for dinner.” The memory rushed back with a vengeance, bringing tears to her eyes. She stared at him in disbelief. “You bumped my arm, and I cut my hand. You helped stop the bleeding.” She glanced at the thin silver scar that still marked the spot. “You did that deliberately?”

“I tossed the cloth into a bag. Your toothbrush into another. Easy as pie, CT got the DNA results for me. Not. Related.” He yanked her close and loomed within an inch of her face. “That worked out even better. You’re gonna make a great addition to the organization.”

He jammed her against the cabinet as he grabbed another beer. Then shoved her away as he released his hold.

Her side slammed against the granite, and pain shot to her spine. She slowly slid to the floor as a frightening realization grabbed hold.

Four—by all that’s holy, she’d told her father the exact number of OPAQUE agents assaulting the boat. Slugger had sent the message. Coercion Ten was waiting to take them out. One by one, the four men would die protecting her.

All the times she’d hidden in the safe room as a child. All the friends she’d never been allowed. All the rules she’d struggled to follow had been nothing in comparison to the anguish she felt now.

Mitch and the rest of them were waging their battle on the boat. Maybe even dying to protect her. Yet never knowing the real fight was here in the house. And she would fight till the end. One thing she’d always had was the strength and perseverance to focus on protecting herself. The past few days had taught her how to stay one step ahead of trouble and search for the life she deserved.

She’d found that life with Mitch. Found her family with the Shades of Leverage team. She would not give that up without a fight.

Bracing her hands on the floor, she pushed to get up. Flinched as a sharp jab of pain hit her palm. Glancing down she saw a jagged piece of broken beer bottle on the floor. Weapon? What had the men said—anything could be a weapon. Slow, careful, and quiet, she brushed her fingers along the floor beneath the overhang of the cabinet, sweeping lumps and shards of glass into a palm-size group. She stood, sliding the small pile of weapons slyly into her pants pocket.

“Now answer my question,” her father shouted. “Who are the men attacking the boat?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat, just like she used to when he’d question who she’d been playing with, or stayed after school with, or what had she been doing out so late. She’d learned how to creatively lie by evading his questions.

“They didn’t tell me their names,” she said. “They like to keep things secret.”

“Don’t play games with me, Elizabeth. One is named Mitch. One Josh. Who else?”

The openness of the expansive house—kitchen, breakfast bar, living room, and on out to the deck—left no place for her to hide. No place to make herself small and invisible like she had at their traditional fifties-style, five-room house growing up.

“Who?” he raged at her.

“I…I don’t—”

A loud knock on the door followed by a shout to open up caught all their attention. Gun drawn, Slugger slammed the door open then steadied a wounded man being pushed in his direction.

“Who’s this?” Slugger asked as he hoisted the guy to a corner in the living room. Dropped him on the floor behind a chair near the bookcase.

“How the hell do I know?” A bushy-haired, narrow-nosed, long-necked man shot him a look of annoyance. “Looked like he was watching the outside of the house, so I hit him upside the head a few times with the neighbor’s fire pit poker. Doubt he comes around anytime soon.”

She should help the man. Should scream…or yell…or something. Instead, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t keep up with what was flashing through her brain. The scene before her eyes made less and less sense.

Where was Mitch? She needed Mitch. He’d help her. He’d know what to do.

Long Neck motioned Slugger back to the door then hoisted another man onto his shoulder before closing the door behind himself.

“Where do you want this one, boss?” Slugger asked.

Her dad pointed to the media room. “And make sure you’ve got those restraints tight. Let me know when he’s awake, so I can question him.”

Slugger readjusted the clearly unconscious body on his shoulder. The man moaned, and his head tilted to the side.

“Drake?” Liz sucked in an audible gasp. “Drake!”

…

The battle for control of the CT boat had gone better than Mitch had thought possible. In fact, there’d been no actual battle. No one on board to repel an attack. No one firing at the Shades team as they did their initial level-by-level search. No one to even cook, clean, or navigate. No one.

He had no doubt that Coercion Ten was playing a complicated game of trying to lure OPAQUE agents further and further into their web. Maybe they had a certain number of agents they planned to take out at once. Or just wanted certain protectors as their target.

Didn’t matter. Frankly, he was damn tired of the match. It was about time to hit an ace down the line and wrap up the set.

For the past hour, the CIA and FBI had focused on securing the vessel. Weapons, ammo, and bomb-making material had been discovered, but thankfully, the bombs appeared to be duds. The government agencies seemed content with what they’d come up with in the raid. Mitch was never content. He always wanted more clues.

On the other hand, he was pissed as hell that there’d been no sign of Drake or Russ. That meant during the time he’d first swam out on recon and when his team had attacked, CT had taken them off the boat. Maybe a smaller vessel or a group of PWCs had come up from behind. In the dark, they could have transferred the men and most of the CT operatives without being seen.

But why? Where were they headed? Another boat? An island? A pickup at sea? He had questions. Questions meant his job wasn’t over.

One of the CIA operatives walked up to Mitch. “We’re about done here. I’ve called in for a crew to take control of this boat. They’ll get it to port. I hate to ask, but could your team wait for them? We’ve got another raid going down later tonight, and my men need to head out.”

“Sure. Thanks for your help on this. Sorry we didn’t get more,” Mitch said.

“Once we rip the guts of this boat apart, we may find more than we think.”

“Keep us informed.”

“Will do.” The CIA operative turned to leave. “By the way, the FBI group took off about ten minutes ago. Your team’s all that’s left on the boat.”

Mitch hated waiting to track Drake and Russ, but he understood when more than one raid in a night could make turnaround time short. Besides, there’d been many times OPAQUE was the first out of the arena.

“What’s going on?” Reese asked.

“CIA and FBI have wrapped things up on their side. They asked if we could hang around until their boat arrives.” Mitch glanced toward shore, then back at the men. “I figured you guys wouldn’t mind a little downtime.”

Stealth leaned back against the rail. “Works for me. What are you planning to do on the Drake and Russ front?”

“First, we’ll move Liz to our St. Louis headquarters. She’ll be safer there.” She’d balk, but he had to do what he thought best. Besides which, he needed to be on top of his game, with no distractions. Time would be of the essence in finding Drake now that CT had him in their grasp. “Meantime, we’ll lay out our plan to infiltrate groups we know have at least some CT embedded. We’ll focus on the U.S. for now. All we need is one clue to get started.”

Josh nodded. “What about the leak you talked about earlier? Any clue on the rat inside OPAQUE?”

“We’ll find the son of a bitch and neutralize his ass.” Mitch motioned the men to follow him as he walked toward the aft, where the two PWCs had been tied up after the assault.

“First, though, we’ll get all the info we need from the traitor.”

“Damn right,” Mitch said. “It’ll be just the four of us working that angle, unless we need to use Joey’s technical services. Agreed?”

Stealth stepped forward. “You can trust Cat, too.”

Mitch had never heard the man even say her name before, and now he was standing up for her? Maybe their time together at the hospital after she was shot had let him see her in a different light.

“Of course we can trust Cat,” Mitch said. “I just didn’t know if she’d be well enough to go back out in the field yet.”

“Maybe not in the field, but she could be our inside person at headquarters,” Stealth continued.

“Good idea.” Mitch nodded. “I agree.”

Stealth leaned back again, evidently satisfied with what he’d said and the answer he’d gotten.

Pausing along the portside rail, Mitch once again looked at his house. At the lights. At the sand. All welcoming. The woman inside was welcoming, too. Liz had made his life feel like living this afternoon. But he wasn’t cut out to deal with …with what? He didn’t even know what to call what he was feeling. Only one thing to do in that case.

“I’m going to take one of the PWCs and head on out,” Mitch said. “See if I can get a lead on any boats in the area. Maybe I’ll run across someone who saw something out of the ordinary.”

“What about your Q40 waiting on the beach?” Reese asked.

“Have OPAQUE pick it up. I won’t be back this way any time soon.”

His three teammates shot each other a questioning glance.

“What about Liz?” Stealth glanced over his shoulder.

Mitch stared at the water then turned to face the men. “Once the relief crew arrives, you all head back to the house. Pick up Liz. See that she gets to the St. Louis headquarters safe.”

Stealth quickly straightened from against the rail. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Mitch said.

Josh shook his head. “You’re a fool.”

“He’s not a fool,” Reese said, as he stepped closer. “He’s running. Running scared, when he should be running back to the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

“OPAQUE is the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.” Mitch used the same response he’d used a million times in his career. It worked in all types of situations, for all types of reasons. “If OPAQUE wanted you to have a wife, they’d issue you one.”

That usually got a laugh. Not this time.

“You’re right, Josh, he’s a fool.” Reese swept his hand in the direction of the PWCs. “If you honestly believe that, then grab your ride and head straight south. Don’t slow down. Your brain might hit you upside that stubborn hardheaded exterior. Damn SEAL.”

“Better watch your mouth, Flyboy.” Stepping on the dive platform, Mitch knew he was doing what was best for Liz. What was best for himself.

He had no right to ruin her life. Being an agent meant having danger as a shadow. An agent’s wife not only had the danger, but also the worry. He wouldn’t do that to her. He’d told her goodbye. He’d kept his promise. Now he’d stay out of her life.

“Don’t blow it, man.” Stealth stepped in front of him. “I heard you laugh today.”

Mitch moved within an inch of his friend. He didn’t need to hear his team’s analysis of him. And, he damn sure didn’t need one of his team giving him advice. “I’ve laughed plenty in my life.”

Stealth narrowed his eyes. “Not like today, man. I’ve never heard you laugh like today.”

“Maybe so.” Mitch shook his head and turned toward the water. “But it’s better this way.”

“Let him go.” Reese stepped back. “One of us will just have to take over watching out for Liz. I wouldn’t mind that job myself.” Reese chuckled. “I’ve always liked a green-eyed woman with long legs and a—”

Mitch charged him head on, until Stealth and Josh held him back.

“See? What did I tell you. He’s already past the point of no return with her.” Reese snorted. “You are so over your head, Mitch.”

Over his head? Of course, he was over his head. Liz was beautiful. Smart. Strong. Defiant, yet willing. She stood up for herself and didn’t let him get away with anything. Plus, there was a connection between the two of them that went above physical. He’d spilled his guts to her about his family…he’d never done that with any other woman. Not only did his gut jerk in agreement, a big hollow space seemed to settle in the middle of his chest every time he thought about leaving.

Stealth was right, she made him laugh. She brought him peace and completion at the same time. That’s all he’d ever wanted in life. That’s all he’d ever need.

Before he talked himself out of his decision, Mitch jumped on the PWC and headed back to his house, while the guys waited for the boat crew to arrive. Sliding the PWC into the sand, he pulled it farther up on the beach and ran toward the house. The deck blinds were still closed. Good.

He opened the door then smiled. There was Liz, standing behind the kitchen counter. Her eyes were red, probably from crying, and her expression said she was surprised to see him. He could almost swear she was trembling. Oddly, she kept darting her eyes from the media room to the deck.

“I’m sorry for being a fool. To be honest, you…us…it scares the hell out of me, but, I love you with all my heart. If you’ll give me a chance, I swear I’ll do my best.” He stepped toward the counter. “What do you say? Will you give me a chance?”

She continued to flash her eyes back and forth. Faster and faster. “Oh, Mitch. That is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

He moved forward, reaching out to take her in his arms. “Don’t cry, honey. I’m here to stay this time.”

“Ain’t that sweet?” A bald-headed thug stepped up beside him. Punched him in the side.

Mitch jerked. Reached for his gun. From the right, a cold piece of metal jabbed upward into his neck and jawline. He recognized the long-necked guy from CT surveillance photos taken on another mission. If he’d been by himself, he’d have reacted with a roundabout kick and fought from there. But he wasn’t alone. There was Liz to consider.

He knew the routine. Braced for whatever came next, he raised both his arms straight out. The guy on the left relieved him of all his weapons, planting another blindside punch to his side for good measure.

Glancing around to get the bearing of the situation, he noticed the busted secondary security panel. They’d evidently broken in and been surprised by the backup. He looked at Liz. “Are you okay?”

“For the most part.” She jerkily swiped tears from her cheeks. “They said they’d shoot you dead if I tried to warn you.”

He figured he was DOA anyhow. Maybe even Liz.