Lie with Me (33 page)

T
he minutes stretched by as Sky and Zane remained standing together, listening for any news on the mission to save her father.

Sky stood close enough to Zane to hear the sounds of gunshots crackle over the headset. She fought the urge to ask Zane what was happening, because she knew as much as he did at the moment. And he had to listen carefully, because if Cam needed anything, she was prepared to make sure Zane left her here with a gun and went to help them.

The moments ticked by slowly as more gunfire erupted. Zane was standing stock-still, as if measuring the sounds he heard through the headset.

The tension rolled off him in waves as the shooting came to a crescendo and then stopped suddenly, leaving a pit in her stomach.

“Dylan, do you read me? Over.” Zane’s voice was tight-sharp.

Seconds stretched into minutes, until finally she heard a voice. Zane nodded and turned to her. “They’re all okay. Your father’s alive. Cam got him out of the house.”

“But it’s not over yet, is it?” she asked.

“No. But they’re close.” He winced and held the headset away from his ears.

“More shots?”

He shook his head. “No, just some interference. Weird.” He jiggled the switches on the machine that connected the devices and even she heard the feedback. The sound grew louder, more high-pitched, and she resisted the urge to cover her ears. Zane cursed and pulled the headset off. And then he suddenly went still.

And then he asked, “How did DMH track you?” his voice deadly serious.

“My BlackBerry. When it was turned on, they were able to find us. But Cam took the battery out; it hasn’t been on for over twenty-four hours.”

“Do you have it with you?”

She nodded, rifled through her bag and handed him the phone. He studied it for a second, and then he was prying it apart to look inside, at the guts of the small machine.

Suddenly, he put it down and picked his gun up from the table. He went to the window, moved the curtain aside—just barely—and then dropped it.

“Sky, grab your weapon. Put on your coat and boots—dress warmly. Grab your bag. Now.”

She didn’t ask questions, just did as she was told, as quickly as possible.

When Zane spoke again, her stomach plummeted. “DMH is close. They jammed the signals so I can’t get Cam. I’ll call but we’ve got to get out of this room before DMH arrives. If we can.”

Also dressed warmly, he opened the door, and the wind assaulted them immediately. He held out his hand to her and she grabbed for it gratefully as they left the room.

Their room on the second floor came in handy. There were two staircases to the ground—and it wasn’t a far jump if necessary.

But it was snowing and slippery and they didn’t have a car. Still, they moved quickly down the stairs and through the snow, which was up to mid-calf on her once they reached the parking lot.

The boots she was wearing were high, which helped keep the snow from getting to her feet, but she didn’t have a scarf, so the cold whipped her cheeks until they stung.

Zane pulled her close, whispered “They’re here” against her ear before guiding her toward the back of the motel and into the thick woods beyond.

G
abriel had spent the last hour staring at the ceiling, using the tedious work of counting off minutes to hours to keep his mind off the fact that Olivia Strohm had been taken away from the house, to God knows where. He only knew he heard her screams, and then silence after a small plane took off.

He’d known she wouldn’t fare well. He hadn’t seen her for the last twenty hours. His torture had stopped during that time as well.

And then the entire tone of the house above him had changed. Fire from automatic weapons. Bodies falling to the ground. And then … silence.

Trouble was, with the concussion he was suffering from and the disorientation he was experiencing because of it, it was hard to tell if those changes were for the better. With an ear to the door and years of instinct backing him, he made a quick decision.

Escaping by himself would work. He’d been waiting to make sure they truly did not have Skylar, to see if Cameron Moore had kept his daughter safe. He’d suspected they hadn’t gotten her, because they’d have immediately tried to break him with her.

It had been nearly seventy-two hours since Gabriel had heard his daughter’s voice on the phone. Without Skylar’s appearance at the house, he forced himself to think the best … while still planning for the worst.

And even though he knew what he should do—needed to do in order to ensure Sky’s safety—he continued to wait, as though he’d somehow get a pardon from heaven.

Never going to happen
. He pushed himself away from the door because he heard footsteps on the other side. Moved against the wall, hoping for the element of surprise, and when the door got kicked nearly off its hinges, he got a surprise of his own.

The man on the other side of the wall was Cameron Moore.

He hadn’t seen him for ten years.

There was no emotion in Cameron’s eyes, but a hand had been extended. And Gabriel was in no position to refuse it. “What now?”

“You have to die, Gabriel. You know that as well as I do.”

CHAPTER

20

G
abriel looked like shit, beat to hell, but he was breathing and on his own two feet. Cam grit his teeth, handed the man a gun and headed back upstairs.

The sound of gunfire stopped him.

“How many men?” he asked Gabriel.

“At least ten at different times,” he responded. “I think there’s a bigger window in the other basement cell.”

Gabriel began to backtrack to the other room. The door was open, and Cam caught sight of bloodied scrubs on the floor.

If Gabriel noticed them, he didn’t give any indication—simply moved like a machine to break out the window, which didn’t have any bars on it.

A tight squeeze, but both men managed. Riley and Dylan were handling the men who’d come back to the house—through his headset he heard Dylan bark that things were under control.

Still, the fact that there had only been a few men guarding Gabriel to begin with was odd. And they’d sent in maybe three others, at most.

He turned to Gabriel and grabbed him by his shirt. “What the hell makes you so valuable to them? And why haven’t you tried to escape?”

Gabriel attempted to shrug him off, but Cam had age and noninjury on his side.

“We don’t have time for this now, Cameron.”

“We do—most definitely. Start talking—and just know that the only reason I’m saving your sorry ass is for your daughter.”

Gabriel’s face went pale. “It’s true, then—she really is with you. Thank God. That’s the reason I stayed in this hellhole.”

“You were waiting here for her?”

“I was sure they’d get her. I knew they’d bring her close to me—I was waiting for that, praying you were keeping her safe … even though you owe me nothing.”

All Cam said was, “I’m in love with her,” as the upstairs windows blew out of the house.

“We’re good—get the hell out of here,” Dylan barked in his ear, and he dropped Gabriel’s shirt and the two began a dead run toward the woods, where Cam had planned to meet up with Dylan and Riley.

When the two men got there unharmed, they crouched down behind a grouping of trees and waited. Gabriel’s breathing was harsh, unnatural. Definitely had broken ribs along with his other, more obvious injuries, like the bruises on his face and neck. And Cam was sure those were just the beginning.

They’d tortured the shit out of him for information.

“What now?” Gabriel asked.

“We’re waiting for my friends. They should be here.”

“If they can get through DMH. I’d have expected better planning from you.”

“You fucking bastard. I should break your neck right now.” Cam spoke into the darkness, felt Gabriel go still next to him.

“You should,” Gabriel said quietly. “It’s the only option. You and I both know that. DMH will never stop looking for me.”

Cam didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then, “The only reason I won’t is Sky. I’m doing this for her. Only for her.”

Gabriel sat back on his heels, assessing him. “You want answers. You all want your goddamned answers, but none of you can handle it. I thought by now you’d understand.”

“I do. I understand a lot of things.”

“You think I’ve ruined your life. Would you rather be sitting in that prison cell?”

Cam knew he was being goaded, since Gabriel had been the one to put him there in the first place. Bastard. His hands curled into fists and it took all he had not to slam Gabriel against the nearest tree.

“Typical Cameron. Stoic till the end,” Gabriel muttered.

At that, Cam did strike, ended up sitting on Gabriel’s chest, his hands at the man’s throat. “You put me in that fucking cell. You killed my father.”

“He was going to blow a major CIA sting.”

“He gave up three years of his life to be a part of that sting. Let his marriage crumble. I want to know why you killed him.”

“You don’t, Cameron. Trust me. It’s been kept from you for good reason.”

“I can handle anything, Gabriel. I handled the fact that you left me in prison for two years.”

“I was finishing the job. I couldn’t very well free Howie’s son from prison when I was still undercover.” Gabriel gasped for breath, his hand around Cam’s wrist. And even though Cam wasn’t squeezing that hard, in the cold it was enough to cut the airflow by a third.

“Tell me why.”

Gabriel laughed, a hollow, wheezing sound. “Your father got scared. Paranoid. He called in the FBI with an anonymous tip and they were waiting for you. But I surprised them, with several members of the OA in tow. There was nothing else I could do, Cameron. They would’ve blown my cover. And, as you know, even one agent’s blown cover causes a lot of damage.”

Collateral damage
. That’s what Cam and his father had been to Gabriel. And in that moment when Cam let his guard down, Gabriel took the advantage, rolling the younger man away and slamming him to the ground.

It was Cam’s turn to have a hand across his throat. “Is that what you wanted to know? That you were a pawn to your father most of the time? That he tried his best but in the end he chose his job over you?”

“That’s exactly what you’ve done your entire life.”

“I’ve made no bones about that,” Gabriel agreed. Cam brought an arm up and slammed the side of Gabriel’s head. The grip on Cam’s throat loosened and the two men were rolling in the snow, punching each other, their grunts and yells hidden under a blaze of gunfire that erupted from the house.

Cam managed to get on his feet. Gabriel did the same, stumbled toward him, although Cam kicked him back against the tree.

After another kick or two, Gabriel was down and Cam picked him up, shoved him against the trunk of a tree … and realized how easy it would be to end this. To shoot Gabriel, leave him in the snow, tell Sky he’d been too late to save him.

It would truly be over then. But when he looked in Gabriel’s eyes, he saw the whole story, and he knew exactly why he wouldn’t carry out that plan.

“You want me to kill you. To do your dirty work, because with you dead, DMH will leave her alone. But I won’t have your death on my conscience, no matter how badly you want it.” He let go of Gabriel. “You’re a sad old man. You’ve got nothing. At the end of the day, you’re left with your crimes and your conscience, and that’s all.”

C
am knew his hands were shaking from anger. He closed them into fists, turned away from Gabriel and thought about Sky.

That calmed him enough to make it through the rest of the op. He was doing this for her. For himself. For their future—this was the first step to actually having one together.

After ten long minutes with silence between them, Dylan and Riley finally arrived, in a near-silent run through the trees. The gunfire had stopped abruptly just before that, and Cam had been torn between staying with Gabriel to make sure he followed through on the plan and going to help Dylan.

“You all right?” Cam asked, moving to check on his friend.

“Fine. We’re both fine,” Dylan assured him, his eyes cutting to Gabriel. “Another car just pulled in. Four men, from what we could see—all armed.”

“Let’s get this done fast before we attract the police,” Cam said.

“Take this,” Dylan instructed, handing Gabriel a pill. “It’ll depress your breathing—and everything else—for five minutes, long enough for them to check you for a pulse, short enough that the oxygen deprivation won’t hurt you long term.”

Gabriel held the pill in one hand and stuffed the throwaway cell phone in his pants with the other as Dylan fitted a fake blood pack inside of his shirt. “Cam will shoot you in front of them. Hopefully, they don’t give as much of a shit about us. From there, you’re on your own.” Dylan paused, and stared directly at Gabriel when he continued, “You know they’ll take your body.”

“I’ll make it work,” Gabriel said firmly.

“You have no choice. It’s our only shot for DMH leaving Sky the hell alone from now on,” Cam reminded him.

“You want this to be real,” Gabriel said.

“You’re damned straight I do. You strung me along for ten motherfucking years. Almost drove me crazy doing your dirty work.”

“It was for the greater good.” Gabriel didn’t back down, just the way he didn’t back down from anything and Cam knew that if need be, the man would put up a hell of a fight to save himself. But the only need, for all of them, was to make sure Sky never had to deal with anything like this again.

“I never told Bullet—Elijah—that we were involved in the death of his son. He’d never have stopped hunting you,” Gabriel said. A parting gift, so to speak, and it was a small comfort.

Very small. In fact, it made Cam want to punch the man right in the face.

“Stick with the plan and shoot me instead,” Gabriel said, as if he’d read Cam’s mind.

“With pleasure,” Cam bit out.

“You both ready?” Dylan asked.

“Ready,” Gabriel said.

Cam nodded. “Ready.”

With that, Gabriel took off first, faster than Cam would’ve thought possible, through the trees and into the clearing.