Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (12 page)

“My father’s killers needed to be brought to justice,” she insisted.

Kell didn’t look as convinced. “You’re in deep shit, Teddie.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she snapped. “What’s Reid hoping to find?”

“Something that proves what you just told me.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Samuel would just leave that evidence lying around.” She crossed her arms and turned away from him, but Kell wasn’t having that. He physically turned her back to face him, holding her by the shoulders.

“I don’t understand what you were thinking.”

“I was going to force Samuel to confess.”

“You didn’t think he’d bring the mercs in to get you?”

She had. But her plan had involved using Samuel’s attraction to her, even though the thought repulsed her. “I had a plan,” she said weakly.

“Your plan blew up in your face—and consequently, ours.”

“Sorry that I’m not as experienced in covert operations, but I still managed to find out what I needed to. Because Samuel would never have called those mercs into the restaurant if he hadn’t been involved with them—that was no coincidence.”

“We’ve got a little more experience in shit like this
than you do, so you might want to give a little less lip and a little more thanks.”

“Thanks? Thanks for what? When you made me strip down for you? Or when you got me involved in a fight that wasn’t mine? This is your game, Kell, and I don’t know how to play it.”

“I don’t know about that, Teddie. You’ve been playing it pretty well since the second we met.”

“I’m not playing you,” she insisted. “I’m saving my own ass, the way I’ve done since Mom died. I’m sorry if that doesn’t suit your needs, but it sure as hell helps mine. I can’t play the sad little victim for you—can’t and won’t. So do whatever you have to do to me; I can take it.”

“You sure about that, honey?”

Kell’s voice was gruff, his eyes wild, the way they’d been whenever things got heated between them.

“You’re just pissed because you’re attracted to me, because you felt something when you touched me,” she told him, and she’d surely felt it, too. His fingers had practically seared her skin and she was both angry at him and left wanting more.

The heated anger had more than a slight edge of lust to it, on both their parts. And he was so close, his touch hot where his fingers brushed the bare skin on her neck where the too large borrowed T-shirt pushed off her shoulders.

She wanted more, but to give in now …

Kell didn’t let her make that choice. He moved closer for just a moment and then he pulled away, broke the contact between them, but the sizzle didn’t leave this time.

He was still too close yet she put her hands together
on the console between them as if prepared to move into his seat, his lap, and finish what he’d started.

And then the door opened and Reid popped his head in. “Sorry to interrupt this special moment, but we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Fuck you,” Kell muttered under his breath as he moved away from Teddie.

Still, Reid’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Without asking, Teddie moved into the back of the cab to let him sit next to Kell, and Reid stared between the two of them and shook his head.

Kell backed slowly down the slight embankment without starting the truck up and she said a silent prayer that they’d escape Samuel’s notice.

Apparently, someone was heeding her prayers, because they got to the main road and beyond without incident. There was silence for most of the ride, beyond Kell and Reid talking in short bursts in acronyms she didn’t really understand.

Within half an hour, they were back at the safe house—but their conversation was far from over.

R
iley didn’t ask about Crystal again until they got home. Dylan locked the door behind him and put on the security alarms and set the cameras, and yeah, this would take away any chance of a honeymoon for right now.

The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Crystal. “Can we enjoy our first week of married life without drama?”

“Apparently not,” she mused. “And be honest, you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Most of the time, that was true. Tonight, losing himself in Riley was all he had on the agenda. But Crystal’s call had ruined all that.

How long had it been? At least five years since he’d seen him, ten since they’d first met, and at some point in there, Dylan recognized Crystal for the sociopath he was. Learned from him, screwed him over but good and then moved on.

Apparently, Crystal held a hell of a grudge.

Dylan was able to put Riley’s questions off a little longer when a call came in from Vivi, who was checking in for Kell and Reid. He’d known she’d be giving the men intel, and hearing the plans for their next moves eased his mind slightly.

An earlier call from her had confirmed his worst fears. Kell had been attacked by men who knew his record, and in conjunction with Crystal’s phone call, it was too big a coincidence to actually be one.

Crystal was working his magic and Dylan needed to conjure up some of his own.

It had been a long time since he’d had to play as dirty as he would have to with Crystal. But since he’d been taught by the man, he’d picked up more of his tricks than Crystal would like him to know.

“Okay, so,” Dylan started, and then the alarms blared and both he and Riley had their weapons out and trained on Cam, who’d broken in—probably right after Dylan called him—and stood in the hallway, pissed as hell and prepared to help Dylan explain this shit to Riley, maybe, or maybe it was to kick Dylan’s ass for not preparing for this eventuality.

“Should’ve fucking killed him when you had the
chance in Jakarta” were Cam’s first words to him, and yeah, this was going to be a long night.

“Can we get this over with so I can consummate my marriage?” Dylan growled as he lowered his weapon, and Cam broke into a smile and then said, “No.”

Riley said no at the same time and Dylan groaned and sank into the couch.

He noted that his new wife was still holding her weapon, and a little too close to him for comfort.

“He hasn’t told me anything about Crystal,” she told Cam, and proceeded to fill him in on the phone call she’d received.

“Why don’t you tell her about how he nearly killed you—and when you got the upper hand, you let him walk?” Cam prodded.

“I didn’t exactly let him walk,” Dylan reminded him. He’d been hoping the Albanian Mafia could do the job for him.

“Start at the beginning, you two,” Riley said with a hard knock of her palm on the table to focus them on her. Her ring made a noise and Cam looked between it and Dylan and made a
well, get to it
motion.

“John Crystal was my mentor,” he started. “I did my first black ops mission with him. For him. And I liked everything about it. At that point, Crystal was an honorably discharged former Force Recon Marine. He was a few years older. Had a lot of contacts. Gave me enough money to keep Cael and Zane in good shape for a while. For a few years, things were fine, until his older sister was raped and then murdered by three men while we were on a job in Bosnia. He wasn’t the same after that. He started playing God. Hell, he was probably always a sociopath. Maybe I was one
step away myself—maybe we all are. But I was starting to realize I wasn’t a team player.”

Cam snorted and Dylan shot him a look.

“What? You had to come to that realization?” Cam asked, and Dylan ignored him. Damn, he’d been young. Hungry and so eager and Crystal had been a willing teacher, for a price. Crystal had a ton of contacts. Experience Dylan wanted. He’d promised Dylan the world, if Dylan would continue to work with him.

But, like Crystal himself, following orders was never in the cards for Dylan Scott. At least not for long. “I tried to just walk away, but he wouldn’t have that. Instead, he set me up, told me he’d let the Albanian mob think I’d stolen three million dollars from them. He stole the money, of course, and was already halfway to pinning it on me and so I turned it around on him,” Dylan admitted. “It forced him to go into hiding.” Not before Crystal had confronted him, though.

“Should’ve killed him,” Cam muttered again, and Riley was simply staring at him.

“He came back wrecked after his sister was killed.”

“When an animal goes rabid, you put it down,” Cam persisted.

“We’re all one step away from that on any given day,” Dylan said evenly. “Killing him then would’ve made me just like him, dammit.”

“And turning him over to the Albanians wouldn’t?” Riley asked softly, the way his conscience always did when he wondered if killing Crystal would’ve been more humane.

In those days, Dylan had been anything but. And so
he poured himself a Scotch before he answered Riley, albeit indirectly.

“It was a good life. Money. Women. Action. It was perfect for someone like me. I think even Caleb and Zane couldn’t have held me back, especially once they were old enough to fend for themselves. The lure of that lifestyle—when you want it—can be the most seductive mistress in the world.” He took a long swig of the Scotch, letting it burn a deliciously slow path to his belly. “I’ve hurt a lot of people. I’d like to think most of them deserved it. But I might’ve started to love my job a little too much. I started … no, I was an island. But you dragged me back, you and Cam and now …”

“Are you happy, Dylan?” Riley asked him quietly. “It’s hard to leave that solitary life behind.”

Riley had, easily, because she’d never really wanted it in the first place. Her life in the spy game had focused on revenge, and while she was good at what she did, having a better reason to do it suited her.

These days, when she helped people, she practically glowed.

“I’m happy, Riley—in a way I never thought I could be. But back then … I couldn’t kill Crystal. I could see it in his eyes … I thought he deserved another chance. Everyone does.”

Cam didn’t say a word and neither did Riley, at first. And then she said, “Sometimes, they don’t take the opportunity, no matter how good it is.”

“That’s why I’m not giving him another chance,” Dylan said firmly. These days, he had everything to lose, had never before understood more than he did right now why spies hid their families.

With his brothers—both by blood and choice—Riley and the other women circling his orbit, he realized how vulnerable they all were.

He had to find a way to protect them.

“He’s formidable and deadly,” Dylan confirmed. “I have to be more so.”

“You can’t take this on by yourself.”

“I brought it on by myself—I have to be the one to end it,” Dylan told her. “Besides, he’s not going to stop until he has me—he just plans on going through all of you first.”

C
rystal had called in a few favors, even ones he hadn’t been owed, and played his theory that Kell and Reid were in Mexico, sent in to take out a gang leader turned drug lord. The information had been difficult to get, shrouded in mystery and rhetoric, but when the agent he’d been utilizing knocked on his door with a worried look on his face, Crystal knew he’d played his cards just right.

“I have an update on the men sent in to grab your targets.” This guy was so young and earnest.

He’d never survive.

Crystal stepped aside and let the man into his house, which doubled as his office. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

“They’re … missing.”

This was no surprise to him, although he pretended it was. “Care to elaborate?”

“We’re checking morgues and hospitals.”

“Christ.” Crystal scrubbed his face with his palms to hide his grin. He’d known from the start he’d have
to work hard to get to Dylan Scott, that there was only one person capable of carrying out his plans.

“There’s more,” the young man continued. “Wires are reporting that Rivera and Cruz are dead.” He spoke flatly, as if he wasn’t sure if it was good news or not.

Crystal wasn’t sure either, but the fact that his agent had a bead on Dylan’s men showed him they weren’t invincible.

The fact that he could get to Dylan’s girl, even more so. The contact with Riley Sacadano had been enough to keep him smiling for a good, long while.

That little shit Dylan thought he could learn what he needed to and then throw Crystal away like a piece of garbage he no longer needed. Thought he could torture him by forcing him to run and hide from the Albanians and figured that he’d never surface again. But that wasn’t the case at all, and Dylan was about to learn that Crystal wouldn’t give up until he got even.

He was a very patient man when it came to revenge. Waiting until he’d been able to give the Albanians their money back—complete with interest—had taken time. But it was just as well, as now Dylan had a life in place—something he would not want to see destroyed—and that made getting revenge even sweeter.

Crystal would pull Dylan’s life apart, brick by brick, and force him to watch.

The fact that Dylan’s retreat still bothered Crystal these years later pissed him off the most.

Crystal had never been the touchy-feely type. Most of his life, that seemed to work against him, an ingrained fault always pointed out to him by girlfriends.
Until he’d found the military, that is. There, being a hard-ass worked very much in his favor.

Now, being self-employed, it was working even better.

He only had one real regret and he stared at her picture now. He hadn’t thought his sister needed protection, and while she hadn’t been killed by anyone he knew, she had been brutally murdered.

To this day, he’d been unable to bring those men to justice and it hadn’t been for lack of trying. He could do most anything he set his mind to, hunt down some of the most wanted men in the world, but he hadn’t been able to find the scum who’d raped his sister before killing her.

It haunted him, woke him out of semi-sound sleeps.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the picture now. And then he put it away and stared at the photos that were spread out in front of him. Dylan Scott. Caleb Scott. Zane Scott. Mace Stevens. Kell Roberts. Reid Cormier.

It was hard to track Dylan and his friend, Cam, and Kell too, but Reid had been a bit easier to track because he was still in the military system, and Crystal had inroads to those files. And Reid’s life story was an interesting one—he’d been able to pull some early records on the man, and he’d certainly discovered something that intrigued him.