Lie with Me (9 page)

Unless she was working with someone on the inside who covered for her. Unless she actually worked with Gabriel Creighton, which was always a possibility. One he hated to consider, and something he would find out ASAP.

Dylan had known about her long before he’d met her, but when he’d finally laid eyes on her, it had been explosive. Literally.

She’d blown up his car.

Luckily he’d had Autostart and had remembered to use it that day.

That had simply been a job for her. She hadn’t known him from Adam and had been following her orders. But the night three years later she’d shot him … He’d been furious, because it had been so fucking personal.

And it had hurt him so unexpectedly, left him spiraling for months. Dylan stayed up many a night wondering if he’d miscalculated, if the heat between them was only that—heat. Lust. If he’d been crazy to think he loved Riley.

She wouldn’t have been the first woman to betray him, but she was the first to get the better of him. No, most of the women he’d been with were in the same line of work as he, where love and loyalty were two commodities no one could keep their hands on.

Cut the maudlin shit and connect the dots, Dylan
.

Okay, yeah, he never really knew exactly what Riley’s job was. Whether she was a double—or triple—agent, or a private contractor, as he’d suspected later, was something that didn’t bother him. He’d seen too much to question anyone’s motives or morals, including his own.

Under orders, spies, spooks and Special Forces did things that the general public never knew about, and wouldn’t want to.

But when human emotions broke through, agents got turned around. When they started to question, to hesitate, it was time to back away. Because a constant stream of black ops … well, that could fry a man’s—or a woman’s—soul. If they had one in the first place.

Cam was more sensitive than most. It just happened to be couched in steel precision. But everyone had his breaking point.

His friend had reached his when Gabriel’s men tried to kill him on the helo. But Cam most definitely had a soul—Dylan knew that for sure.

Whether Riley still had one that could be saved remained up to him to find out.

She’d had one three years earlier, when she had only known his alias and not his real name. The two days and nights in that hotel in Bogotá, they’d pretended the world didn’t exist. Room service, time in the Jacuzzi. Lots of time in bed, on the floor, anyplace they landed.

Yes, he remembered those nights well.

“
Who are you, Riley?
”

She turned her face on the pillow, stared at him with those dark eyes that made him hunger for her again. “I’m just like you.
”

Frustrated, he turned away, onto his back
.

“
Riley is my real name,” she said finally, her words drifting lazily between them, as if this was a first date and there weren’t matching his-and-hers automatic weapons on the floor of the closet, hidden from room service’s prying eyes
.

He moved his hand to find hers, still without looking at her. “Deacon’s not mine.” Again, silence, albeit a more comfortable one as she squeezed his hand lightly. “Riley sounds like a boy’s name.
”

“
That’s what my dad wanted.
”

He snorted. “I’m glad he didn’t get what he wanted.” And then, “My real name is Dylan Scott.
”

It felt odd saying it, like he was talking about a stranger. He’d been Deacon Sanders for so long, and a variety of other last names when they suited his purpose to protect his brothers. He had sworn he’d never go back to his old name
.

He’d also sworn not to fall in love, but that promise was shot to shit.

When he’d woken up on the third morning, she’d been gone. He hadn’t seen her again for six months, on a job in Ibiza. They’d been after the same man, but for different reasons. He’d gotten to the guy first, and Riley hadn’t been happy.

He’d made up for it—put a smile on her face that he knew lasted for weeks. He still grinned when he thought about it.

There were three other meetings after that, all unplanned, in three different countries, with absolutely no promises made between them.

He’d wanted them, but his pride—and his inherent distrust—had stopped him from pursuing more at that time.

The one promise he’d never break would be to Cam. He would get his friend free, or die trying.

He almost had.

Why’d you do it, Riley? What’s so bad you had to shoot me, and not look back?

His ringing phone stopped him from mulling over that question further. He glanced at the call screen, saw it was Zane.

Dylan didn’t have too many people he trusted beyond Cam and his brothers. And so, in times like these, when he needed intel from many different sources—and quickly—he turned to his brother Zane for help.

His two younger brothers were as different as night and day.

Caleb—or Cael—the middle one, was serious. Military.
Law-abiding
, as Zane would say with a roll of his eyes, like Caleb had some sort of disease.

He needs a personality transplant
, Zane would often comment, although he’d do it out of reach of Cael’s hearing.

Caleb had recently been assigned to Cam’s Delta Force team, and Dylan didn’t want to get him involved in Cam’s life like that.

Getting Zane involved, though, wasn’t an issue. His youngest brother was always up for anything, especially a party. Dylan knew that facade let Zane keep his past tamped down—so far, it had worked for his brother. A Navy SEAL with a penchant for black ops, gray ops and any other color in between, Zane always approached Dylan for work when he was on leave. Mainly because Zane tended to get into trouble when he didn’t keep busy.

Dylan figured that if Zane was going to get into trouble, at least it would be trouble Dylan would be able to help him out of.

And Zane had gotten damned good at getting places Dylan couldn’t, which annoyed the shit out of Dylan and made Zane pretty damned pleased with himself.

Fucking and fighting were all part of the same game for Dylan’s youngest brother, and Zane seemed to always have the fucking part outweighing the fighting by a mile.

It was why Zane was able to get more intel on Riley in twenty-four hours than Dylan had been able to get in three years between his CIA contacts and others.

“You weren’t looking in the right place,” Zane told him now over the phone. “I’ve got the scratches down my back to prove it.”

Dylan put a hand on his head. “Don’t want to hear it.”

“Why? Rumor has it that you’re not getting any of your own.”

“Do you have any intel for me?”

“Creighton’s gone.”

“So I’ve heard—spies always disappear.”

“Not like this. The CIA denies sending him on a mission—they claim he was kidnapped and killed after he resigned. And they never admit shit like that.”

Dylan ran his hands through his hair, pushing it off his face. “They never admit it unless that’s the story they want us to buy. There’s a hell of a lot more to this than that. When the hell did he leave the CIA?”

“Near as I can tell, sometime in the last six months. And I got some early intel on your Riley too,” Zane continued. “I hooked up with a girl she went to high school with. You didn’t go back far enough.”

“And?”

“It’s about Riley’s family. Apparently, until her dad died, the family was loaded—like, really fucking wealthy. Riley went to private schools, lived in a mansion, the whole deal. And then her dad died and they lost everything. Immediately. Bank accounts were stripped, the house went into foreclosure and Riley’s mom took jobs cleaning houses.”

“That’s odd.”

“Yeah. I’ve got the official death cert on her dad, which claims suicide. Would explain why they didn’t get life insurance, but not why their bank accounts were stripped. But there’s barely anything on the guy, just that he was a CEO for a major corporation. Except that the company has no record of him ever working there. I checked Riley’s birth certificate. Her dad’s name was listed, but there were no other records for him past the age of twenty-two, beyond the death cert.”

Bells went off in Dylan’s head, as he was sure they had in Zane’s. “Agent.”

“Smells like it to me, but I can’t get any further. A few years after Riley’s dad died, her mom got really sick. Cancer. She died in a state hospital—a major dump that the state closed down three times for all different reasons, from patient abuse to uncleanliness. It’s a place to die, a convalescent home for people who don’t have insurance, or money to pay hospital treatment bills. They don’t even give pain meds at this place.” Zane sounded disgusted. “Riley was eighteen when her mom died.”

Dylan leaned his head back against the lounge chair and stared in the direction of the sliding glass doors again. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Creighton’s got a big reach, brother. You need to be careful,” Zane warned before hanging up the phone.

A
ll Cam wanted to do was sleep, with Sky wrapped around him—wanted to feel normal again. But that wouldn’t happen … at least not tonight.

Before he’d even entered the house, before he’d met Sky, he’d set a perimeter. He’d know if danger was approaching from any angle. Before he’d called Dylan, he’d wired the windows.

If someone was coming, he’d have enough warning to do some damage.

I know who you really are
.

He stared out the window and calculated. Planned. Because he couldn’t sleep with a woman next to him, couldn’t risk waking up in some kind of PTSD-induced dream, holding her down and flashing back to that night five months earlier, on his last mission for Gabriel, when he’d blown everything.

God, that mission had fucked him up—and he hadn’t even been the cause of the collateral damage that time. Dylan had forced the truth out of him, and then Cam had buried it deep down. Until tonight—no, until last night, when his freedom flashed before his eyes and threatened to disappear.

When he closed his eyes, he saw the woman who’d tried to kill him, and he saw that cell he’d spent two years in that could become his permanent home again—and both those images made staying awake imperative.

The last mission for Gabriel had been different from the start. A man he knew only by the nickname of Bullet was his target. Bullet was rumored to have affiliations with various terrorist groups, but Cam’s initial research didn’t turn up much intel. Unfortunately, he couldn’t risk a more intense search, because that could trigger attention and put Bullet himself on high alert. He’d known going in that it would be a major risk.

He’d also known that handling this assignment alone was along the lines of a suicide mission.

But there had been an angel on his shoulder, and the intel Gabriel had given him was spot-on about how to get close to his mark.

In order to get close to Bullet, it was necessary for him to get close to Bullet’s girlfriend, Mariana.

And he had. He’d been able to meet her easily enough when Bullet was away, going on the knowledge that the woman liked clandestine affairs with American men.

Mariana was predatory. Sexually restless. Ruthless. She liked to both receive and inflict pain during intercourse, and otherwise.

There was nothing behind her eyes, and that’s what worried Cam the most. Behind the charisma, the beauty, there was nothing there. An empty shell, with no conscience, no soul.

He’d almost been afraid it would rub off on him, as if evil could be transferred by touch.

But he knew if that was true, he’d have turned a hell of a long time before.

The bed in her house in Morocco was opulent. Ornate. And in it, he performed a chore that turned his stomach.

Whoever said there was no such thing as bad sex had never been forced to have it under a guillotine.

He fast became an expert at faking orgasms—it had been the only thing that saved him. He’d never have been able to protect himself when he was coming. It was a rare man who could.

“You are so handsome … fuck me harder, my American stud,” she’d whisper as her long red nails raked his back.

She liked pain, and for a week he’d given her what she wanted.

At the end of that time, Bullet was due home. And Cam would be ready.

Except … Mariana called him that evening, said that Bullet had been delayed. That they had more time together.

But there had been an anger in her tone, one he’d misjudged.

Bullet had changed his itinerary, probably did so on a regular basis, and normally, waiting him out wouldn’t have been a problem. Until Mariana went insane.

Cam had been on the receiving end of a woman wanting vengeance. A woman scorned who’d wanted to screw him while she was screwing him. Because during that last sex session, Mariana had tried to jam a knife into his carotid, and when that hadn’t worked, she’d gone for his balls.

He’d bucked her off of him, grabbed the knife. Pushed her away. Suddenly they both pulled a gun.

The slamming open of the bedroom door had surprised them equally. Cam knew Mariana had a son, but he’d never seen any signs that the boy was home, had no way of knowing he’d arrived from boarding school hours earlier.

Until he’d seen the boy holding the machine gun—pointed directly at Mariana. Heard him scream, “You’re screwing around on my father, disrespecting him,” in Spanish.

Cam had waited for the bullets to hit him, unwilling—hell, maybe even unable—to shoot the boy, or kill his mother in front of him.

When the shot rang out from Mariana’s gun—now purposefully aimed at her son—the boy’s eyes went wide with surprise and shock, his mouth moving but no sounds coming out.

Cam was pretty sure the boy was trying to say
Momma
.

Cam’s only recourse at that point was to save himself from the gun now aimed in his direction.

Two shots—one from him, one from Mariana. Cam wiped his fingerprints down, stepped over the bodies and didn’t look back when he’d boarded the flight home. He’d left Morocco with enough blood on his hands to ensure sleeping through the night would most likely never happen again.