Two Evils (18 page)

He spotted it two blocks from his apartment building.
Clever
, he thought, careful to keep his glances between the rearview and sideview mirrors to a minimum so as not to alert his companions. Certainly they deserved to know they had a tail, but he was trying to come up with a plan for getting rid of it before alerting his passengers to the problem.

When they pulled onto the Enterprise Rent-a-Car property a short time later, th
e black vehicle once again drove past. John pulled the Charger around the building and into a parking space in the back. The Ford Explorer they would be taking to Ohio, as Rex had told him earlier, was waiting there. As the three of them were getting their bags out of the trunk, John knew it was now or never.

“We have a problem,” he began. Billie and Gabe looked at him. “A black SUV has been on our ass ever since we left your father’s neighborhood.”

“You’re shitting me,” Gabe said with a scowl. “When the hell were you going to let us in on that little detail?”

John turned to him. “I didn’t say anything before now because I wanted to be sure, but considering they followed us from my place too, it’s pretty clear someone’s determined to find out where we’re going.”

Billie raised an eyebrow. “I was wondering when you’d bring it up,” she said. “Don’t look at me like that—I was a businesswoman too, remember? I know how to spot a tail. Plus your furtive glances gave you away.”

John chuckled. “I just can’t get anything past you, can I?”

She reached up and patted his face in a “you poor thing” gesture. “It’s not for lack of trying, Johnny B. Goode. So are you going inside to get the keys or what?”

With a shake of his head, John turned and headed inside the office. He was back within minutes, and after putting their bags in the cargo area, he said, “Billie, you’re a sharpshooter, right?”

“I’m actually qualified as a sniper, but yeah. Been a while since I’ve had to make a long shot,” she replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I think I’ve got a plan for getting rid of that tail—and you won’t have to make a long shot to do it,” John said.

Gabe turned and leaned back against the side of their new ride, crossing his arms over his chest as he said, “Well then, Businessman, what’s this master plan of yours? I can’t wait to hear this.”

I
t was as good a plan as any, though Gabe had protested, declaring it too dangerous.

“Not if we lead them down a side road somewhere,” Billie countered. “Gabe, we have to stop them somehow.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know who it is first?” he asked.

She glanced at John, then back at him. “My gut tells me it’s the Sardetsky hit squad. We both figured they’d end up following us from St. Thomas.”

“She’s right,” John added. “If it was someone on Wainright’s payroll, I doubt they’d continue to tail us like this.”

“You’re forgetting one thing, pal—nobody knows where Wayne and Darren are except the three of us,” Gabe pointed out. “Whoever it is, they’re going to follow us until we lead them right to the rest of the team.”

“Which makes sense if they’re working for the general, but the Russians are only after Billie,” John said.

Gabe’s scowl grew darker. “Oh yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot fucking better. Thanks, dickhead.”

“Hey!” Billie said sternly. “Let’s not and say we did, eh? No matter who the hell is following us, we need to stop them. Whether their employer is General Wainright or Grigori Sardetsky, I don’t rightly give a fuck; I don’t want to lead them to Wayne and Darren regardless.”

She then pulled one of her Glocks from its holster and checked the magazine, then chambered a round. “John knows the roads in this town—I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t propose a crazy-ass plan like this without keeping in mind the safety of the public.”

“Are you sure about that, She-Devil?” Gabe challenged. “Just how fucking well do you know this guy? You met him, what, two days ago?”

Billie narrowed her eyes—why the hell was Gabe questioning her judgment all of a sudden? Was it because of her reaction to where Wayne had decided to hide with Darren? Her old team leader had chosen that particular location because he had believed with unwavering certainty that she would come back for him—for them all. He’d been right, of course, and she was grateful for his faith in her even after having not seen or heard from her in a year’s time. It didn’t mean that recalling the happier times he had referred to in his riddle—that grandest, most magical of weekends with Travis—had hurt less. It didn’t mean that having the memory she had worked hardest to bury break free its prison hadn’t felt like the Hulk had sucker-punched her in the solar plexus.

Even now, thinking about it stole her breath away. Her lungs simply emptied as if the oxygen had never been there, and her focus on the task at hand blurred for a second or two. But as painful as it was to remember—as agonizing as it would be to see that beautiful place and know she would never be there with Travis again—Billie knew she had to put it away, at least for the time being. Her friends were counting on her.

One of those friends acting like a juvenile jackass wasn’t helping.

“I trust a fellow CIA agent as much as I trust a fellow Marine,” she said at last.

Gabe moved off the Explorer and stepped closer. “Billie, you and I have been friends for more than ten years. We have shed the same blood in the same mud more times than I can count. We share a
lot
of history together. Yet you’re going to take the word of a guy you’ve barely known for forty-eight hours—who got you shot at twice by Russian gangsters—over mine?”

She holstered her weapon and then crossed her arms. “Have you got a better plan, Thunderhead? Because I’m not hearing anything out of your pie-hole that doesn’t sound like jealous whining.”

Holy shitballs!
That was it—Gabe was
jealous
!

Un-fucking-believable
, she raged silently.
As if there’s anything to be jealous of
. John had feelings for her, yes, and apparently Gabe had picked up on that. But she wasn’t returning those feelings—her freefall into zombie-mode was proof that she was in no condition to pursue a relationship with anyone. And given her treatment of him this morning, she’d be lucky to be able to call John a friend when this mess was over.

Billie had known for years that Gabe wanted to be more than friends, but he’d respected her choice to remain just that. He’d been supportive of her relationship with Travis because he’d seen how happy she was. So why was he turning into a green-eyed monster on her now, of all times? Surely her friend of more than ten years wouldn’t be hoping to take advantage of the fact that her fiancé was dead? Christ, Gabe could be an ass
-hat, but he wasn’t an insensitive prick.

“No,” Gabe replied stiffly. “I’m afraid I do not.”

“Then the both of you get in front,” she replied. “I’ll take the back seat—it’ll be easier to shoot out the tires from there.”

And that was it—the simple, yet ingenious plan John had come up with was to lead their pursuers on a bit of a wild goose chase to a remote part of the city. Billie would then drag her marksmanship skills out of mothballs and shoot out the front tires, thus preventing further pursuit.

“It won’t prevent them from shooting at us,” Gabe had pointed out.

“Which is precisely why we have to do it in a remote area, as opposed to a main thoroughfare or the freeway,” John had countered. “Civilian casualties and property damage will be kept to a minimum or even eliminated.”

Gabe had shaken his head, saying, “I think it’s too dangerous.”

It occurred to Billie as they were finally climbing into the Explorer that Gabe might also be concerned for her safety, which she appreciated but considered a waste of energy. After all, they had severed together on numerous missions—had shed the same blood, he’d reminded her—and she’d been expected to pull her own weight then, same as the rest of the team. As an operations officer with the agency, she had been expected to do her job whether as part of a team or on her own. Why should it be any different now that she was neither Marine nor CIA?

That was something she contemplated as John was pulling out of the lot and onto the street—the fact that she was technically the same as any other civilian. Billie was not remiss to the irony that it had taken being sucked into a dangerous situation, not unlike those she’d lived through before, for her to realize that thinking of herself as a civilian was an uncomfortable feeling. She preferred to be busy, to be doing something worthwhile. It was why she had convinced her parents to sign a waiver allowing her to join the Marines after she’d graduated from high school a year early. It was why she had said yes when the CIA had come calling at the end of her six-year contract with the Corps. Travis had said not long after she’d met him that “It would’ve been a shame to let all that training go to waste.”

Billie had thought she’d miss being a Marine—and she had, for a while. But learning the tricks and trade of being a Central
Intelligence Agency operations officer (the abbreviation for the position being OO) had presented its own set of unique and exciting challenges. There had been intrigue. There had been danger. Like she had bled for her country as a soldier, she had bled for it as a spy.

And then…there was Travis. They’d been partnered for an op in Russia—the very one where she’d met the former Piotr Sardetsky. Travis was one of the few agents she’d worked with who didn’t bristle at her “don’t fuck with me” attitude. Anytime she had bitten off a sharp reply, he had just let it roll off his shoulders like water off a duck’s back. He had been friendly and outgoing in spite of her prickly demeanor and general distrust of men, even to the point of inviting himself along whenever she mentioned she was going out. For
several months she had told him no—that she preferred her solitude or the companionship of female friends. Travis had always accepted her rejection with grace, but also with the words “Maybe another time.”

The day she said “Yes” for the first time was one she would never forget. That morning she had been lamenting the fact that he just didn’t give up to one of her friends, an analyst she had gone through training with. Espy had turned it all around by asking, “Why do you keep saying no? I mean the
real
reason, not some bullshit excuse.” She’d explained that after the hazing incident during her SpecOps training, she’d found herself utterly unable to trust any man she wasn’t related to, unless he had somehow proven beyond a doubt he
could
be trusted. There was no one thing he could do to make her see it. It always took time, and then one day she would just know that yes, this was a man she could trust.

Espy had then regarded her with a sympathetic expression, saying, “Honey, how can he prove he can be trusted if you won’t give him a chance?”

So Billie had turned the tables on Travis by actually asking him if he wanted to join her for dinner. The expression that came over his face had been priceless—he’d stared at her open-mouthed for a full minute. Unable to keep from laughing, she let it loose, and he had soon joined her. She’d realized then that laughing with Travis felt good.

Following that first dinner, everything else she did with him seemed to come so much more naturally. Whenever they laughed, talked, or just spent a lazy afternoon reading, it felt natural. It felt right. Even the occasions when they worked together, fewer and far between once news of their romance had reached their superiors, had gone so much more smoothly. Travis had even started a habit of predating
e-mails that told her how much he was thinking about her, to be delivered once per day, whenever he was on assignment and couldn’t contact her directly. It was the first time a guy had done something so ridiculously sappy that hadn’t made her want to run for the hills.

When she had introduced him to the guys on the team, and they had seen how much he cared about her, they would have fun ra
zzing him about having “some balls, man” to risk a relationship with the “deadliest woman in the world”. Gabe had admitted that he was envious of Travis, claiming that “The spy must have some secret quality that I apparently lack, if he could get you to say yes in a matter of months, and I couldn’t in five years.”

When she had introduced Travis to her family, her brothers appeared to have accepted him straight away, though she later found out that they had threatened to dismember him if he ever broke her heart. Her father had welcomed him as another son, inordinately pleased to see his only daughter so deliriously happy.

Billie shook her head to stave off the tears threatening to break free. The memories of happier times needed to be put away, to be once again locked into the past where they now belonged. She could not afford to let her pain swerve her focus—John and Gabe were counting on her. She needed to be at the top of her game.

Or as near to it as made no difference. Damn Wayne for choosing
her
past from which to select an appropriate hideaway. If it had to be hers, why the hell couldn’t he have chosen a point in her history that would
not
bring with it a torrent of pain and heartbreak? Why did it have to be something to do with Travis? Wayne was the fucking Professor, for goodness’ sake! The smart one. The leader. Surely he was intelligent enough to have come up with something that wouldn’t cause her so much misery. After all, she had essentially run away from home because she could no longer handle the pain of seeing Travis in everything around her, and now he was forcing her to re-live every agonizing minute of a life that had died the moment Travis had fallen to a gangbanger’s bullet.

If seeing Old Man’s Cave again didn’t send her into complete mental meltdown, she was going to remind the Professor why she had been given the nickname She-Devil.

“And…there they are,” John spoke up suddenly. “Clever bastards, to keep on our tail after we switched cars.”

Billie sat up straighter as Gabe remarked, “If these are your Russian friends and not some military jackass working for the general, what’s to stop them from taking pot shots at us?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Billie pointed out. “But they haven’t so far. And I know the family fairly well. The fact that they haven’t tried to kill us yet tells me they have a specific target in mind.”

“Or the parameters of their mission may have changed,” John added. “Maybe I’m a target, too—I was with you both times they came after you down in St. Thomas, after all.”

Billie nodded, hating how her chest squeezed at the thought of John getting hurt. “Apparently they haven’t caught on to the fact that you’re harder to get rid of than cockroaches.”

John laughed. “I prefer the Energizer Bunny—I keep going and going…”

His words brought to mind how just hours ago, he had taken her hard and fast against his apartment door, and then slow and easy in his bed. He’d certainly kept them both going then and she couldn’t resist smiling, though she bit her lip and looked out the tinted window to her right trying to hide it. The irony of the more recent memory intruding into her thoughts when she’d been all but consumed with old ones for the last hour was not lost on her, but better to think of the last good time she’d had than her painful past.

“Let’s get this over with already,” Gabe grumbled. “It’ll be dark soon.”

She sensed John looking at her in the rearview and met his gaze. “Billie, you ready for round three?” he asked.

Pulling her readied Glock from its holster, she said, “Absolutely.”
Please Lord, let my hand be steady
, she thought, adding her regular prayer in silence.