EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3) (6 page)

Billy was thinking more along the lines of an investigative angle—how many shops rented those types of masks? But he knew better than to say anything. Knowing KC, she’d have a complete list ready before they were done here.

“Clowns,” Rose repeated. “Like this whole thing is a joke. They would have killed those little kids without thinking twice. Humiliating us is more important to them than children’s lives.” She paused. Waited for him to catch up.

Unfortunately, he was already there. Maybe even, for once in his life, he’d sped past her. She was talking about jettisoning the rulebook, going rogue. “You can’t let your emotions determine your actions, Rose.”

“And we can’t play by the rules, either, Billy. Not anymore. Not after this morning. They’re taking the game to a whole new level, and we need to as well.”

He said nothing. She was right—and yet also so very wrong. If they were forced to play by the Preacher’s rules, then they’d already lost.

But he knew better than to tell her that. Actions spoke louder than words to Rose. Better to show her, let her intuition absorb the facts and make one of those leaps of faith that had saved them all six days ago when she’d gone after the Preacher. The same intuition that realized there was a traitor in their midst long before he’d been able to see it with his facts and data.

Maybe now was the time to sit down and do some analysis. “I think we’ve been going at this backward.” He took his magnetized whiteboard with his shopping list from the fridge and sat down beside her, wiping it clean. “When was the first time we had evidence there was a traitor?”

She didn’t even have to think. “The FBI was hit first, early last year. Then, before Christmas, we lost Victor Krakov.” Her voice dropped. Krakov was a Navy SEAL who’d gone undercover with one of the Preacher’s groups. Rose had brought his body home, honoring his final wishes.

He made marks on his timeline. “And then ATF with Lucky. All attributed to someone accessing the DOJ undercover-operative database.”

“Right. Lucky confirmed that last week when the Preacher accessed it again, despite the beefed-up security, and killed his friend.”

“All of that points to a leak at a central intel database—someone at the DOJ or maybe even NSA.”

“Maybe even multiple leaks—” Her words cut off. She jerked her chin up, eyes wide. The bag of spinach dropped to the tabletop. “No…no…” She spun out of her chair as if breaking free from a cage. “KC suspected back at Christmas. But we were too busy chasing the Preacher. Damn it, I should have seen it.”

He stood, catching up to her as she paced, firmly put the spinach back into her hand and pressed it to her wound. “Seen what?”

“The traitor. Or, more likely, traitors. Doesn’t matter. There’s been one in our house all along.”

“No. Rose, how could there? Everyone’s been vetted—” He stopped. Looked at his timeline. Saw what she saw and realized she was right. “Chase. His undercover op wasn’t listed in any database. Not even our own. But on that last day—”

“The Preacher’s men knew he wasn’t who he said he was. How’d they blow Chase’s cover, Billy? He was on the inside for months, and they trusted him completely. It wasn’t until he was forced to break radio silence and call us—”

“You don’t know that,” he snapped. His mind dissected the timeline of everything that happened to Chase during that ill-fated Christmas mission.

She kept her gaze on him, expression grim, until he finally met her eyes and nodded. “You’re right,” he conceded. “It was only after we brought the entire team on board that Chase’s cover was blown.”

“Which means Hollywood is clean—he was there when I recruited Chase.”

Good thing, because Hollywood was currently headed to Atlanta to pick up a former CDC doctor who had been mentioned in the Preacher’s files. “But that still leaves Marion and EZ, not to mention the folks we reached out to at the NSA and FBI.” Who else was at the STR offices during the op? “Plus, Anderson and our own on-site security and support staff, like Teresa—”

“And Susan Payne,” she reminded him, an edge to her voice. “Don’t forget the good senator. She knew.”

“Doesn’t what happened today rule her out?” he argued. For some reason he was always defending Susan to Rose. And Rose to Susan. “Susan didn’t know about the meet this morning. Only people on our own team knew that.”

She sighed. “So, we’re right back where we started—except now we know for certain we have a traitor in our midst.”

“We ruled out Hollywood. Plus, we know Chase and KC can’t be involved. And EZ has been pulling intel from the Preacher’s hard drive all week.”

“Making him less likely. But we won’t be able to rule him out until we see how good the intel is.”

He nodded at that, hating not being able to trust his own team. “We’ve another problem as well. During the hearing today, I learned that one of the Preacher’s men from the tunnel escaped.”

“Why didn’t they tell us before this? We could've been searching—” She grimaced and answered her own question. “They don’t trust us. They don’t trust
me
.”

“Even worse, they’re unleashing the National Security Division to do a full audit. And they want you to testify tomorrow. Then they’ll decide our fate.”

She rolled her eyes, understanding that all the committee and NSD really wanted was a scapegoat. “If I fall on my sword, do you think I can save the Team?”

“Not going to come to that,” he promised, not meeting her gaze. His phone rang again. Susan. Wondering where he was, no doubt.

“Don’t you need to rush back to the senator?” she asked.

He didn’t want to know how she knew the call was from Susan. No way could she see his phone screen from where she stood. Sometimes he wondered how much of her Razgravian grandmother’s gypsy blood Rose had inherited.

Instead of answering, he moved a chair in front of the sink and motioned for her to sit. “Let me clean that cut and get you patched up. Then we can figure out our next step.”

Billy guided her head back and, holding her thick, dark hair out of the way with one hand, tenderly flushed the laceration with the other. He was glad she had her eyes closed. Rose was far too good at reading people, and after two years of his wanting her, there was no way he could hide it from her face-to-face. Not now when he finally had a reason to fill his hands with her silky hair, stroke her soft skin.

After what had happened to her in Razgravia, she typically shied away from any uninvited touch. And who would blame her?

But not with Billy. With Billy, she didn’t flinch, didn’t wince. In Billy’s hands, she relaxed and allowed him to care for her. He enjoyed the moment, knowing all too well she would back away from him as soon as it was over. Slam the wall of professionalism down between them.

If only he knew for certain if she felt the same way about him as he did her. First time in his life he ever felt a coward. But how could he say anything without explaining that he knew everything Grigor had done to her in Razgravia? That he’d actually watched the video of her torture? She’d never want to be with him knowing that.

Yet, how could he not tell her how he felt? Do-or-die time, he told himself.

She sighed, relaxing even more as he washed dried blood from her hair. The cut wasn’t deep; he could close it with surgical glue from his field kit.

“Why hasn’t some woman grabbed you up, Billy?” Rose asked, her voice holding a hint of humor. “Is it because you aren’t ready to settle down?”

It was because he wasn’t ready to settle for anyone other than her. But what he said was, “I am ready to settle down.”

“Really?” She flicked her eyes open. He shielded them with his palm as he rinsed the soap away. Then he released her, handing her a dishtowel to dry off with.

Now or never, Price.

It took all his training to keep his breathing slow and his voice steady. “In fact, I have found someone. The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

She was mopping her face with the towel, but he didn’t need to see her expression to read her. Not with the way her hands tightened and her shoulders hunched. Her entire body grew tense. Did she not know he was talking about her?

“Is that so?” The towel muffled her voice, but that didn’t hide the mix of resentment and longing that colored her words.

His pulse raced as he waited for her to lower the towel and confirm his suspicions. She took a moment longer than necessary before heaving in a deep breath and handing him the damp towel.

“I’m happy for you and Senator Payne,” she said. Her words were earnest, truthful, but her smile was weighed down by sadness and didn’t make it to her eyes.

He knelt beside her, finishing the job of closing the wound, ready to tell her everything when his phone rang again, disrupting the delicate balance between them.

“That will be Susan Payne,” she said, looking away as he applied the glue, aligning the edges of the cut so she’d have the least amount of scarring possible—something he’d never bothered with when patching up any of his guys in Delta.

“I expect so,” he answered. “But, Rose, I need to tell you—”

Before he could say anything, she sprang out of the chair and grabbed her coat. “I’d better leave you to her, then. I have to check on EZ’s progress. Get him and KC searching for the man who escaped from the tunnel last week. Can you keep the investigators off my back for a while? Then we’ll talk later, come up with a plan?”

He pushed himself to his feet, hiding his disappointment at her return to business as usual. “Let me discuss our options with Susan and I’ll call you.”

She stopped at the door and looked back. A foreign emotion colored her expression. Envy? Anger? Both? “Tell the senator I’d prefer Leavenworth to Gitmo—food’s better, even if the weather’s worse.”

As soon as the door closed behind her, he allowed himself a grin. Rose felt the same about him as he did her. Now that he was certain, all he had to do was help her see it for herself. Prove to her that she could trust him with her heart.

He washed his hands and rolled his shirtsleeves down, snapping the wrinkles from the soft cotton. Ran through his to-do list: save the woman he loved from life in prison for treason, save his team from the traitor in their midst, save the nation from the Preacher’s people and whatever they had planned.

All in a day’s work.

His phone rang again. Susan. Again.

The senator wasn’t going to let Rose off the hook easily. Her committee and the White House needed someone to take the fall for what had happened last week.

Well, okay, maybe two days’ work.

Chapter 6

KC rushed toward Chase’s hospital room, anxious to see him and fill him in on what happened on the Mall that morning, but more than that, she was excited to finally be bringing him home. Her bed had been too lonely these last few nights, and much too cold.

“So today’s the big day,” she said as she breezed through the door and into his room. A physical therapist was there, adjusting Chase’s crutches. KC was glad to see that someone had convinced him that he actually needed to use them.

Chase didn’t say a word. Just glowered at her as he fumbled to get out of the bed.

“Here, let me help you.” The therapist, a young woman with short brown hair, hurried forward and grabbed his arm to steady him while he got on his feet, pulling his crutches under his armpits. “There you go, good as gold.” She turned to KC. “I’ll just leave a note in his chart. Take care, now.”

“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” he grumbled after the therapist had left and the door was shut behind her.

KC grinned. “Really? I never would've guessed. You gonna walk out like that?” She pivoted forward, catching a nice view of his bare backside beneath the lopsided hospital gown tied at the back of his neck.

“I don’t give a fig as long as I get out of here.”

“I’m sure the nurses will appreciate that,” she said, appreciating the view herself.

He groaned and dropped back down on the bed, taking care not to jostle his right ankle swathed in its thick, black plastic splint. A walking cast, they called it, even though the doctors still wanted him to stay off his leg for a few more days. Yeah, right, like that was going to happen. “They’re trying to kill me in here.”

“It hasn’t been that bad.”

“You don’t know. You’re not here when they are poking and prodding, pulling and twisting. Sadists, every one of them. They enjoy seeing my pain.” He looked at her as if he’d just confided in her the world’s biggest secret.

She tried hard to keep a sympathetic look on her face and not laugh, but the corners of her lips were twitching. What was it about hospitals that could turn the roughest, toughest guys into two-year-olds?

“Sit back and I’ll help you get dressed.” She picked up the overnight bag she’d brought and dropped it next to him on the bed, opened it up and pulled out a pair of boxers. “Now let’s put on your big-boy panties and get you out of here.”

He glared at her. “I don’t need your help.”

This time she lost it. She laughed. She couldn’t help it. The sound filled the small room, which made him even grumpier. She leaned in for a kiss. “You are adorable.”

He growled, then wrapped his arms around her in a crushing hug and fell backward onto the bed, pulling her on top of him and planting a big kiss on her lips. “I’ll show you adorable.”