EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3) (2 page)

Keeping his movements slow and his hands in sight, he set the beer and pizza down. She circled around, taking the chair opposite his, and he got his first good look at her. His impulse was to look away, but she deserved better. He forced himself to absorb the changes three years had wrought. Not the years, they hadn’t changed her. It was the nineteen days of the most inhumane torture Grigor and his warped imagination could devise.

She was still beautiful, but in a different way. As if she’d absorbed some secret, ancient knowledge, she appeared older than her thirty-four years—but also timeless, ageless. There were no obvious scars on her face, although her nose was slightly crooked and one eyebrow now arched higher than the other. Her eyes were still the same dark pools, fathomless as they watched and analyzed everything in sight.

She leaned back in her chair and Billy continued to catalog the changes in her. The wry, half smile that twisted her lips was new, more sardonic than the mischievous grin he remembered. Her cheekbones arched over a gaunt face—not malnourished, more strained. Her jaw locked tight as if she did not look forward to this reunion between battlefield friends.

Which surprised him. He’d often thought of her during the past three years, wondered how she was getting on, if she’d continued working for the CIA after everything that had happened to her. Truth be told, he’d hoped he’d see her again in better circumstances.

And now, here she was.

“What happened to your voice?” he asked.

She wore the clothing of a street person. A knitted cap covered the dark curls he remembered so fondly, oversized layers of flannel and khaki swathed her small frame, and fingerless gloves allowed her to grip her HK M1911 with a casual tension that belied the stopping power of the .45 caliber semiautomatic. He should know—he owned the same model, left over from when he was in the field.

Her chuckle was dry, brittle, but her smile appeared genuine. “Scars on my vocal cords.” Nineteen days of screaming would do that. “If I could carry a tune, I could get a job as a torch singer.”

“There’s always phone sex,” he offered, trying to keep things light. His attention was on her hands, but she surprised him with a smile that actually made it all the way to her eyes.

“You always were a smooth operator, Billy Price.” She nodded to the pizza. “Please tell me that’s not more of the vegetarian crap I found in your fridge. I mean, you’re retired now, shouldn’t you live a little?”

He liked how she wasn’t afraid to let him know she’d breached his security in more ways than one. Professional courtesy, letting a friend know when they’ve screwed up, gotten lax.

All it took was thirteen days living as a civilian—no place to go, no time to be there, no one waiting for him. He flipped open the lid on the pizza, glad that he’d chosen tonight to indulge, unleashing the tantalizing scent of sausage and pepperoni. “Got your favorite. Garbage-can special.”

Let her fill in those blanks—incorrectly, he was ashamed to say, but right now, staring at the wrong end of a gun held by a woman who had every reason to pull the trigger, he’d take any advantage he could get.

“My lucky day,” she said, scooping a slice with her free hand and taking a healthy bite.

Billy popped open two beers and began to eat as well. What the hell? If this was his last meal, at least it was still hot.

He watched her eat. Every bite was filled with confidence. Nothing dainty, no half measures. Enjoying and savoring life while she could. She didn’t know it—couldn’t know it—but she’d often been the object of his late-night fantasies. As she chewed and swallowed, and licked tidbits of red sauce from her lips, he allowed himself to wander into no-man’s land, imagine she was here because she felt the same about him, and now that they’d both left their respective services, they were finally free to pursue a life together.

They polished off half the pie, but she never relaxed her hold on the forty-five. So much for his fantasies. 

“Want to tell me why you’re here?” he asked again, clearing his throat.

She smiled again as if she’d won a bet with herself on how long it would take to break him. “Heard you were up for a promotion.”

He tipped up his beer, letting the cool liquid sluice down his throat, finishing it. She nudged hers toward him, still three-quarters full.

“Got beat out by some damn civilian.” The bitterness in his voice disturbed him more than the pistol aimed at him.

“So you really did leave Delta? For good?”

“The official story is I separated voluntarily, but they made it pretty clear I was too old to do the job I wanted. I didn’t want the job they offered, pushing paper, so,” he shrugged, “the Army and I parted company. For good.”

She chewed in silence, her gaze weighing his words.

He swept up her beer and leaned back in his chair. “Their loss.”

“What happened in Razgravia,” he continued before he lost his nerve, “it shouldn’t have gone down that way. I shouldn’t have left you behind, Rose.” It was hard to say her name. He took another sip of beer to cover the fact he could barely swallow.

“You got the job done, extracted your target safely.” Her voice grew distant. “Did your guys make it out okay?”

This was the old Rose, the one more concerned with the people than the job. “Yes. They did. Thanks to you.”

“I’m glad. You built a good team there, Billy.”

“Is that what this is about?” He nodded to the gun still in her hand. “If so, I’m happy to take the heat for my team. It was my call to leave you behind.”

Her eyes widened, and she stared at the forty-five like she’d forgotten it. “You were just following orders, Billy. I don’t blame you.”

An edge to her voice made it clear that she
did
blame someone—and God help them if she found them alone one dark night. Her chuckle was raspy, raw. She laid the pistol on the table and spun it toward him. “I owe you an apology.”

He grabbed the gun before it completed a revolution. As soon as he raised it, he knew it was empty. And that it was his old service weapon, taken from his bedroom. He leaned back in his chair and laughed, long and loud.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said with a smile that gave life to her words. “But the direct approach would never work with you. And I wasn’t totally sure—” She blinked, and he knew a thousand images of Razgravia and nineteen days left to suffer at the hands of a psychopath sped through her vision. There wasn’t enough time in the world to heal from that...not totally.

This Rose wasn’t his comrade in arms, but she also wasn’t a helpless victim. She was someone altogether new, forged in the crucible of battle and loss. Just like Billy.

“You didn’t trust me?” he asked.

She shrugged, a little sheepishly. “Tell me about the promotion you wanted.”

Why did he have the feeling she already knew all about it? “Leader of a new team.” He gave her the sanitized, not-so-top-secret version. “Multidisciplinary, multiagency, counterterrorism. Cutting-edge.” He made a pun of his Delta nickname, hoping she’d smile again.

“And the civilian you lost out to?”

He jerked a shoulder. “Younger, some kind of covert ops hotshot. Probably NSA or CIA, maybe FBI—never found out for sure. Has a decade of fieldwork behind him, but from what I could tell, damn little leadership experience. Idiots on the selection committee couldn’t get it through their thick skulls that taking care of yourself playing I Spy is a helluva lot different than sending a team into the line of fire, coordinating and preparing multiple strike forces. Hell, just the logistics—”

He broke off, realized she was grinning at his tirade. His heart lurched. “Wait. You?”

Her chin bobbed up and down in affirmative.

A wide grin split his mouth.
This was too much
.

“Guilty. How’d you like to come work for me?” she said. “I need an XO I can trust. Someone who understands what it means to send a team into the line of fire, coordination, logistics...”

Now it was his turn to laugh. For the first time in thirteen days, he felt fully alive. This was why she’d taken her unconventional approach to a job interview—to remind him of all he’d lost when he walked away from Delta.

If Rose Prospero was offering him a ticket back into the game, damn straight he was grabbing it.

It would mean shoving all those late-night fantasies into a vault and locking them away, but that was okay. In fact, somehow, this was better. The chance to watch her back, to protect her like he hadn’t been able to in Razgravia. He owed her that much.

And maybe someday…

Billy raised his beer bottle in a toast and took a swig. “What can I say, Rose? You know the surefire way to a man’s heart.”

Chapter 1

Two Years Later

National Mall, Washington DC

Rose Prospero paced up and down the steps leading to the Hirshhorn sculpture garden. Snow from last week’s storm still covered the Mall's open space stretching between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, although most of it had melted in the fifty-degree temperatures DC had enjoyed since then. She turned and scanned the area above the sculpture garden from the carousel to the food kiosk beside it and back. Rose hated being boxed into a corner. Hated even more risking anyone from her team because of said corner.

But right now, time was too short to play it safe.

“You’re good. I can’t see you,” she said into her throat mic. Rose had chosen the sculpture garden for her meet because it was private and with its lower elevation a single operative could easily cover all the approaches from above. With her team stood down, all official activity suspended, she was as short on people as she was on time.

“Excellent,” KC replied from her sniper’s perch on top of the food kiosk. “Although I still don’t understand why you and Lucky picked seven in the freaking morning to meet out here in the dark. Why couldn’t you guys just have coffee and sticky buns at Angelina’s like normal folks?”

Rose smiled at the former FBI agent’s griping. No one on her team was “normal folk.” And with Lucky entering WitSec, meeting in the pre-dawn January darkness out on the cold, deserted Mall was the safest place.

What KC didn’t know—not because Rose didn’t trust her, but because KC had been called in at the last minute after Billy was summoned to another damn special hearing on the Hill, fighting to get the Team cleared back to active status—was that Rose’s meeting with Lucky Cavanaugh was a trap. With Lucky playing the role of bait.

“Here comes the groom,” KC said in a singsong parody of the wedding march. “At your ten o’clock. Right on time.”

That was Lucky. Loyal and steadfast to a fault. Rose almost hadn’t asked him to help her—he’d already sacrificed so much in their fight against the Preacher’s homegrown terrorist network—but he was the only bargaining chip she had that a traitor on her team might take a chance on.

If
there was a traitor on her team. If not, then she and Lucky could have a nice, long good-bye chat before the US Marshals whisked him and his new bride away.

She’d never prayed so hard that she was wrong. But the churning in her gut told her she was right.

“Anyone else around?” she asked KC as Lucky’s form strode down the steps opposite her, entering the sunken sculpture garden. KC’s higher elevation gave her an excellent field of vision, allowing her to cover all approaches.

“No pedestrians at this end of the Mall,” KC reported. “A lone jogger down at the far end of the reflecting pool and a few vehicles on Jefferson.”

“If you see anyone, even one of our people, let me know immediately.”

There was the slightest hesitation before KC answered. “Will do.”

The FBI agent was no dummy. She knew the Team was stood down, removed from active ops until cleared by the Congressional Oversight Committee. But she was a professional, tabling her questions until after the job was done—one of the reasons why Rose had chosen her.

Rose knew KC’s curiosity about what this meet was really about would need to be satisfied, but right now, she had to focus on getting Lucky out of here alive.

She met him halfway in front of the sculptures she thought of as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, although there were three of the roly-poly figures, and handed him an earpiece and microphone.

“Thanks for coming,” she told him, giving him a quick hug to hide his movements as he inserted the comm devices. “I wish there was another way to do this.”

He glanced around the deserted sculpture garden nervously. While undercover with the Preacher’s organization, he’d had to live with a target on his back for months. Now Rose was putting him right back in the crosshairs. “Me, too. Who’s on with us?”

“Just little ol’ me,” KC chimed in over the earpiece. “How’s Vinnie?”

Vinnie Ryan was the civilian who had helped Lucky and Rose take down the Preacher last week. “Good, despite all this. Sorry you couldn’t make it to the wedding. We kinda had to rush things with WitSec and all.”

“Jared and his guys treating you all right?”

“Yeah. Except I’m gonna owe him my pension. He keeps beating me at poker.”

KC’s laughter rang through Rose’s earpiece. “He grew up in Las Vegas. Worked as an Elvis impersonator to put himself through school.”