Bare Nerve (15 page)

But he still was just one man. Justine and Bay were occupied, so Anna took a deep breath and a minute to analyze the fight. She jumped into the fray at Jack’s back, feeling truly alive in the moment, fighting back to back with Jack. Each of them was equal in this moment. There were no secrets between them, and they functioned well together.

She’d been bred for this, and she realized—as she fought with an energy that seemed to come from deep inside—that this was what she’d been missing when she’d hid behind her computer and waited for information to come to her. She liked the physicality of this moment. She disliked the fact that she’d denied this part of herself for too long.

“Let’s finish this,” she said to Jack.

“I’m trying,” he said, connecting solidly with his opponent’s sternum. Then he used a judo chop to the neck.

The other guy attacked Anna with a strong kick that knocked her into Jack. He grunted and steadied her. “You okay?”

“Fine,” she said.

She was aware of Jack fighting behind her, but she focused all her energy on
her
fight. This guy had pulled his knife and now took a swipe at her leg. She kicked the weapon from his hand and out of reach. Knowing she had to make this attack count, she concentrated on hitting his neck and head. She hit him hard in the chest with a front kick, forcing his head to connect with the wall. Jabbing his neck with her elbow, she grabbed one of his meaty wrists and brought it up behind his back. Forcing his hands together, she cuffed him.

She turned to help Jack, but his opponent had fallen to the ground in a crumpled heap. Jack cuffed him.

“The Savage team will be at the hangar in less than five minutes,” Charity said to them over the mic.

Justine and Bay had their guys bound, and they maneuvered all the men into a small group.

Jack pulled his handgun and kept the assault rifle loosely at his side. “I want some answers.”

“You’re about to get them,” Charity said.

“We are armed to the teeth,” Anna said. “I’d hang back if I were you, Charity.”

“I’ll provide outside cover,” Charity said.

“Me, too,” Bay said.

“Justine and I will stay here with you,” Anna said to Jack.

“I can handle this on my own.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. We need answers, not dead bodies.”

Jack looked over at her. He rubbed his hand softly over the bullet burn and bruise she could feel forming under her left eye. “Dead bodies work for me. We need only one man to talk.”

“But we aren’t uncivilized. And you’ve already sent a message to Andreev by breaking the men he sent to attack us.”

“You could have been hurt, angel. Seriously hurt.”

“I’m okay,” she said. “I knew the mission specs before I agreed to come here.”

“Yes, you did. But you didn’t expect to be betrayed by someone on your own team. You and Justine can stay, but I will handle this my own way.”

J
ack was angry. Well beyond angry. Sending this much manpower after the Liberty Investigations team meant Andreev didn’t want them off his tail—he wanted them dead. And knowing that one of Jack’s people had set them up like that…set up Anna like that…made him want to kill.

He tried to remember he was no longer a killing machine, but some things were too deeply engrained into a man. And for him, it was killing.

His men walked into the hangar in total radio silence, and they looked ready for action.

“What the hell happened here?” J.P. asked. “Is everyone okay?”

“The good guys are,” Justine said.

“Anna’s bleeding,” Hamm said. “I’ve got my medic kit with me.”

Hamm moved forward, but Jack put himself between his men and the women. “Not yet. Someone sold us out. There was no way for Andreev to know about this except from one of you.”

No one said anything. Jack watched his men and knew he wasn’t going to find an answer the easy way. “Fine, we’ll do this the hard way.
One by one
. Harry, come with me.”

“Why me?” Harry asked. He shifted his AK-47 into a more maneuverable position in his arms.

“We need to talk to everyone,” Anna said. “The rest of you can wait here with Justine and Bay.”

“I don’t like this. Why do you suspect one of us, Jack?” Hamm said. “And that wound on Anna’s face should be disinfected and covered.”

“I suspect one of you because we controlled the information. As you all know. So one of you had to be the leak.”

“Why not the women?” Harry asked.

“They were with me the entire time.”

“So it’s automatically one of us,” Harry said.

“It would have to be,” J.P. said. He moved away from the other guys so no one was at his back and he had a better vantage point.

All the men began to do the same. Their unit had been honed in fire. They didn’t trust easily, and Jack could honestly he say he understood the men and why they were the that way. But this moment hurt. He had tried to build the Savage Seven into a unit—a family—and now one of them had torn that family apart.

“I don’t think you should do it one on one. We all need to know who’s responsible,” Tommy said. “Whoever betrayed us put Jack and I in the line of fire yesterday.”

“I agree,” J.P. said. “So which one of you bastards is working both sides on this one?”

No one said anything, and Jack knew they
were
going to have to do this the hard way.

“Anna, tell them what you found.”

“Um…I found out that Harry isn’t an American by birth and that he grew up in the same group home Demetri and Maksim Andreev grew up in.”

Everyone turned to Harry.

“So? That doesn’t prove anything!” Harry said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Anna said. “What do you have to say for yourself, Harry?”

He nodded his head. “I…I did give him some information on your location.”

The team converged around Harry, and Jack moved toward his men. “I want to question him.”

But fists were flying, along with accusations. “Did you sell out Armand, too?”

“I hope you spent the money you made because you aren’t going to be able to enjoy it now,” J.P. said as he hit Harry in the jaw.

“Stop it!” Anna said.

“He has it coming,” Justine said.

“We need more information from him. We don’t need him barely able to stand up.”

“My men deserve a chance to deal with this,” Jack said. “This is an internal issue.”

“No, it’s not,” Anna said. “We need to know how much has been compromised.”

Jack nodded. “Back off, guys. Let’s give Harry a chance to speak.”

Harry spit out a mouthful of blood, but Jack noticed he didn’t say anything about the beating his men had given him. “I never sold out Armand. This was different.”

“Explain that,” Jack said.

“The women aren’t part of our brotherhood, and Jack is different with them around. He’s compromising our team.”

Jack noticed his men didn’t jump to his defense. “I thought we’d settled this on the plane.”

“No, we didn’t. All we accomplished was that Kirk disappeared, and you’re working with Liberty Investigations more closely. Your loyalty should be to us,” Harry said.

“I don’t condone what Harry has done, but you’re a different man on this op, Jack,” Tommy said.

“Jack has to be a different man. Your team hasn’t been able to apprehend Andreev in all these years. No organization has done it,” Anna said, and as much as Jack appreciated her coming to his defense, he knew that it wasn’t really helping.

“Armand died so we could capture Andreev.” Jack said. “And, Harry, no matter what you tell yourself, you are directly responsible for this fuck-up. And there is no way we are going to let you get away with saying my attitude is to blame.”

“Fine. What are you going to do with me? I don’t work for Andreev. And I want to stay with the team.”

Jack looked at his men. “That’s not up to me to decide. You betrayed everyone when you decided to give up our location.”

“When will you know?” Harry asked, wiping blood from his nose.

“I’ll keep an eye on Harry,” Bay said. “The rest of you go talk this over. But we need to make a decision soon and then move out.”

Anna didn’t like the way Jack had stood aside and let his men beat the crap out of Harry. Sure, she didn’t like being betrayed, but beating a man like that…Surely no leader would think that was acceptable.

And when she and Jack had fought back to back, she’d felt they had enough in common to make up for the fundamental differences between them. But what had just happened made her doubt that.

“Here,” Hamm said, handing her an antiseptic wipe and a Band-Aid.

She reached up to clean the burn on her face, but Jack took the wipe from her and drew her away from the others. “Talk among yourselves,” he said to them.

He walked Anna to a corner of the hangar where they could be alone. His hands were gentle as he tended to her wounds. And when he leaned down and kissed her cheek, she wanted to melt. Hell, she did melt a little inside, despite the fact that she was still horrified by the way he’d let his men beat Harry.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I can’t believe the brutal way you dealt with Harry.”

Jack shrugged. “It’s the way we are. We have to be able to believe the man next to us has our back. And Harry betrayed that. I’m surprised it wasn’t worse than it was.”

He was touching her so tenderly she was having a hard time reconciling both sides of the man he was. “You really are a savage.”

“Have I ever tried to convince you otherwise?”

“Yes,” she said. “When you held me so carefully in your arms.”

“That’s different. That’s…I can’t explain it. But it has nothing to do with the type of man I am as a leader.”

Anna stepped away from him. “You can’t be so different.”

“I am. And don’t act like you haven’t done the same thing. How did you treat the mercenary who kept upping his price on you in Peru?”

“I didn’t beat him bloody,” Anna said. But she knew she’d wanted to. If she’d been able to get her hands on the man who’d been their only hope for keeping Piper safe until Justine and Nigel got to Piper, Anna would have done something vicious.

“He tried to kill you, angel,” Jack said, drawing her closer and wrapping his arms around her. “I know my men think I’m too rattled by you to do my job, but I’m not. If anything, having you on this team makes it more important to me to make sure we’re all safe.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I know we have nothing in common and outside of this place in time we make no sense, but, Anna Sterling, I am not prepared to let anyone harm you. And if someone does, they should be prepared for the consequences.”

Anna felt oddly touched by his words. She knew they didn’t make sense in the real world, and she had no idea what life would be like when they got back to DC.

She realized she wanted to enjoy every moment she had with Jack. She couldn’t sanction the beating he’d allowed for Harry, but she did understand what had motivated it.

“Jack, there’s something about you that makes me very glad to be a woman.”

He smiled down at her. “I’m thinking of you as
my
woman.”

She wasn’t sure she liked that. She belonged to herself and had always been comfortable with that. But Jack was changing the way she looked at the world, and maybe belonging to him was something she could handle.

He leaned down and kissed her. The embrace was tender and sweet. He traced the seam between her lips with his tongue and then slipped inside.

She wrapped her arms around him and rose on tiptoe so their mouths were fused together. She brushed her tongue over his. He breathed her name, and she held him tightly to her, burying her face against his chest. She felt his chin come down on the top of her head, and for a minute she just stood there, absorbing his strength.

She liked the feel of Jack’s hand against her face. He made her feel cherished and beautiful—two things she could safely say she’d never experienced before. But that didn’t mean she knew how to handle it or him. That she even wanted to.

And she wished she could give a little of this peace in her soul to him because she knew he had a gaping wound inside at being betrayed by one of his men.

And that was something no one should have to experience. Brothers at arms should always be able to count on one another. It gave Anna another perspective into the reality of Jack’s world. She wondered if he was savage because that was the way the world had made him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I just realized I don’t really know you at all. And that might not be a bad thing.”

“You know me better than you realize,” he said. “Let’s get this business with Harry settled so we can get on our way to Tamanrasset. I don’t think I’ll have a moment’s peace until we’ve captured Andreev.”

Anna didn’t say anything, but Jack had shaken the part of her she’d always taken for granted, and she knew she was going to have to figure out how to be herself again.

And she wasn’t sure how to do that.

Jack and Anna rejoined the rest of the team. Jack didn’t like the way everyone looked at them. “What’s the decision on Harry?”

“We’ve discussed it, and J.P. will stay with Harry every second until he proves himself to us. But we don’t want to lose him,” Hamm said.

“We all don’t like working with women,” J.P. said. “No offense, ladies. But you’re throwing off our normal rhythm, and that may have contributed to Harry’s actions.”

“I’m not ready to forget what he did,” Tommy said, “but as long as one of stays with him twenty-four–seven, I think we’ll be okay. If he does anything like this again, he’s out for good. And we put the word out so other mercenaries know he can’t be trusted.”

“That sounds fair to me,” Jack said. “I’ll give Harry the news, and then we need to head out. This took up too much time. Every day we delay in getting to Tamanrasset is a day closer to letting Andreev slip through our fingers.”

“While you do that, we’ll get the vehicles ready to roll,” J.P. said.

“And I’ll get the local authorities to take care of this bunch of riffraff,” Justine said.

“We can’t allow any of them to go back to Andreev and talk,” Jack said. “We need to find an alternative for the men.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Charity said.

Jack walked away without looking back. He knew Anna wasn’t going to approve of his actions. He didn’t expect her to or need her to. He had to remember for the sake of his men and the team he’d built that he was in charge. There wasn’t going to be any more discussion about what they did. He’d survived in this world a long time by carving his own path.

And Anna Sterling wasn’t going to derail him now.

To the left of the plane, Bay and Harry stood quietly talking together. Bay had no weapon trained on the other man, and Jack respected the man though he couldn’t understand his behavior. But, then, to Bay, Jack imagined they all seemed pretty strange.

“Thanks for watching him. You can go back to the group now.”

“I will,” Bay said, bowing to Jack before walking away.

“The team voted, and you can stay on with a babysitter. If you screw up again, we’re going to cut you loose and make sure you never work again.”

Harry nodded. “I understand. I don’t…It’s hard to say no to someone from the past when the present feels wrong.”

“What hold does he have on you?”

“He saved my life when I was young. I mean, really little, like six. A couple older boys were messing with me, and he came to the rescue. I didn’t know his name or anything then.”

“How did he know to contact you?”

“When he killed Armand, we saw each other. I knew he was that guy from the group home, and he remembered me. I guess he must have asked around about who we were. He contacted me two days ago, and I put him off, but then you were acting like a horny fool, and I thought we need the old Jack to catch this guy.”