Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (2 page)

Chapter Two

Two drinks after a year of alcoholic abstinence had taken their toll on Sophie’s ability to balance perfectly. She stood in front of her hotel door, unsteady on her nude kitten heels, and dug her fingers through her purse, searching for the key to get into the room. She giggled when her fingers finally closed on the cold metal, then tried to jam it into the lock.

With a shout of triumph, she pushed open the heavy door. It was nothing like the hotel doors she’d grown up with in America. It was thick, solid wood with a steel core. No one was getting in without permission.

Before she could step into the room, a man strode out of the elevator and stopped, staring at her. After a beat, he pulled out his smartphone and started playing with the screen. Probably sending a text message.

Sophie watched him for a moment. He looked gray. Older than her father would have been if he was still alive. He reminded her, too, of the oldest tenured faculty at every university. His coat was tweed and his shoes were slip-ons. The man must not be planning to leave the hotel, because he’d wilt immediately in the heat.

He looked at her again, then back at his phone. Slowly, he moved down the hall. Sophie smiled, but he didn’t see it. Then the elevator beeped and they both jerked, turning to see a hotel employee walk out with a rolling cart of covered dishes.

Sophie stepped through the door, away from the old man’s deliberate non-perusal. She’d learned to notice when a man was pretending not to look at her, and the old guy was a pro. “Such a
perv,” she muttered, unsteadily kicking off her shoes in the direction of the closet.

Walking into the bathroom, she stripped off her dress and turned on the shower. Soon steam was rolling through the bathroom, thick and fragrant
like roses.

Sophie didn’t want to sober up, but she knew the effects of the alcohol wouldn’t last long. She’d have to deal with the night. But for the moment things were easy and free in her brain. Until they weren’t, she’d enjoy the time she had.

She slid off her panties and pulled the elastic band from her hair. Running her fingers through it, she stepped into the shower. The water hitting her skin felt like Heaven as the heat worked its way into her sore muscles. She slumped boneless against the tiled wall and let the water roll over her.

Aidan stood on the roof of the hotel, looking down to the beach far below.

God, he hated heights. But he’d tried to take the damn cart into Veronica’s room
posing as room service after he’d failed to pick her lock and she was either too drunk or too savvy to answer the door. It had to be done. He’d already waited too long.

He’d learned the importance of timing in Delta Force, but Aidan had been out for
four years and he was slipping. Time to talk to his boss about a little retraining if he was going to make elementary fuckups like this. His body was in prime physical condition to fight in underground matches—but he needed to work out before he took on anymore death-defying crawls more than 25 stories above the ground.

He had to be his best.

The stolen hotel jacket strained across his shoulders. It was uncomfortable enough that he used one hand to rip it off and let it fall from his fingertips, fluttering down into the dark night. Then he attached the hook to the edge of the roof, circled himself with the harness and stepped off into nothing, rappelling down as his stomach sank.

Slowly—so slowly—Aidan moved from the
roof down to the room where he knew Veronica was staying. Heights sucked. No matter how often he found himself up in the air without a net, he’d never be used to it. The way the night wind brushed over his heated skin gave him chills, but he didn’t falter.

Not even when the ground seemed to sway under him did he give in to his nausea. When he’d
started training for Delta Force, he’d scaled ropes, then walls. Aidan’s instructor had told him that you don’t look down. Don’t ever take your eyes off what you’re moving toward. So he forced his eyes to focus on the light from Veronica’s window.

If she was standing at her window, gazing dreamily at the sea, he was fucked. He had no doubt she’d punch through the glass and send him spiraling to the ground far below. He didn’t have time to die. Three days behind schedule meant that Oliver didn’t have time to send another operative. They needed her put down and
to get the location of the documents she’d taken now.

Not to mention that his body ending up on a beach in Dubai could cause some political problems. Hell, Oliver would probably posthumously fire him.

This is the life
. The steam had billowed into wet, white clouds around her and, though she’d been in the shower for more than half an hour, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get out. The concierge had pointed her toward a selection of herbed soaps and shampoos in the spa a few days before. Both she and Adele had spent lavishly, coming back to the suite with armfuls of caked soap and small bottles.

For two years, they’d
planned for the vacation. Sophie had family money that she refused to use; Adele didn’t have anything other than her salary and some decent investments. The trip wasn’t going to hurt anything, but they’d definitely feel the pinch if anything big came up in the next few months.

Sophie hoped
Adele was out dancing in one of the nearby nightclubs, or maybe drinking wine on a patio overlooking the ocean. They’d both been on edge during the weeks leading up to the trip, and the luxury had helped it melt away like ice cream on a hot summer day. They finally felt like themselves again.

Humming the theme from Gilligan’s Island, Sophie finally shut off the shower, shivering when she pushed back the glass door and the air parted the clouds, kissing her skin with a chill. The bathroom was still cloudy, though, the steam thick enough so she could barely see.

In an attempt to clear the room, she moved toward the door with her feet slipping a little on the tile. She cracked it open and fresh air rolled in, filling the room with the salt scent of the ocean. Turning back to the counter, she pawed through the cosmetics they’d stashed there. First, the face cream, which she slicked over her skin and rubbed in while eyeing the various lotions. Choosing one that smelled just a bit like roses, she rubbed it into her arms.

A sound made her turn her head to the door, but no one was there. It made sense.
Adele had no reason to be back so early.

She set down the lotion and picked up a hair treatment. It was designed to keep the frizz down, which was incredibly important in such a hot place. She smoothed it through her hair, enjoying the clean scent. It reminded her of her mother’s
dressing room when she was growing up, the smell of the cosmetics sweet in her nose when Sophie gripped the edge of the wooden vanity to peer at her own face in the mirror. Sometimes she and her sister would even get away with a pot of blush or bottle of perfume.

Thinking about the smell of the hair treatment made her stop. They’d been there for almost a week and she’d never once smelled the sea air in her room. How would the scent of the ocean make it inside through the closed glass windows?

She reached out with one hand and dragged it over the fogged mirror. Pressing hard, she moved her palm back and forth quickly, then stopped.

There was a man standing behind her.

Terror gathered in her stomach. He didn’t move, and she didn’t respond, just kept moving her hand back and forth long after the glass was clear. With a sudden motion, she jammed her elbow back and slammed it into his ribs.

He grunted and she pushed back, hoping she’d cracked him hard enough to slow him down. But the man absorbed the blow and, breathing hard, tangled his hand in her long, wet hair. When he yanked it, red pain flashed in front of her eyes.

Sophie tried to turn and hit him again, but her feet couldn’t find purchase on the wet floor. The room spin crazily as she slid into the counter when he let go of her hair. Pain sung up her back and she turned in midair, hitting her face on the toilet.

When he moved in to grab her, she kicked him and he fell back with a curse. Scrambling up, she ran for the door—but she was too slow. He wrapped a large hand around her mouth.

Her teeth sunk into his skin.

He didn’t pull back. Instead he wrapped his other arm around her neck and pressed in hard. She couldn’t breathe. Spots swam in front of her eyes. She watched the purple colors of the opulent bedroom beyond the door blur and fade, and then everything was just gone.

Veronica’s naked body collapsed against him and he gathered her into his arms, a light burden. Part of him wished that she’d wrapped a towel around herself; he wasn’t made of stone. Though one part of him had grown hard when he took in her long, pale limbs.

It was surprising that he’d subdued her so quickly. The last time they tangled—two years before in Beijing—she’d almost cut his throat. Maybe like him, she’d gone soft in the interim.

He carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed, averting his eyes from her
enticing curves. She wasn’t a woman. Not really. She was a vicious killer. A terrorist. She was the one link they had to stop what was going to happen.

Aidan used zip ties from the pack around his waist to restrain her, locking them securely against the bedposts. Her head lolled to the side, her hair twisted down her shoulders in thick ropes of gold. Dressed in the bar, she’d seemed sophisticated.

Naked and free of makeup, she looked impossibly young and tired.

Turning from his perusal of her face, Aidan began to dig systematically through her room. Her passport, international driver’s license, American social security card, checks and credit cards were all in the same name. He couldn’t find anything hidden. Clever girl, he thought. In his early 20s, when he traveled on black ops missions with Delta Force, he’d carried several aliases at all times. Having only one meant having only one way out.

A search of her luggage yielded what he would expect from a young woman traveling with a friend. There was casual clothing, a swimsuit, some dresses that would have peaked his interest if they belonged to a woman he didn’t despise, and silky underthings that made him curse and drop them as if they burned his skin. Nothing was in the pockets except a dry cleaning receipt in a light jacket. It was marked from Paris. There was minimal cash in her purse or the bedside table.

A novel with a dog-eared page lay on the dresser. There was also lip gloss and a half-empty bottle of ibuprofen. He knocked on walls and furniture until his knuckles split again, but there was no trace of anything hidden in the room. If he’d checked it before knowing who was staying there, he’d have thought that the occupant was just a person visiting Dubai with a friend.

But she wasn’t just some pretty girl in an exotic locale. She wasn’t here to browse the souks, walk on the beach or sip fruity, frozen drinks while laughing with fraternity boys. For all that she’d put on a good show the entire time he’d been watching her, there was no question that she was the woman he’d come to find.

He’d met her before, but never in her natural state like this. Somehow Veronica had managed to disguise her lush curves and intriguing hollows when they’d clashed on assignment. Her eyes were the same bright blue he remembered, but they seemed larger in her porcelain face.

She was beautiful, young…and a viper. A snake who would as soon look at him as blow him a kiss. Even if he couldn’t turn up anything of the ordinary in her room, he knew her for what she was. A murderer.

Dima had been a good man. He di
dn’t deserve to end up with her knife in his chest, his body dumped alone by the water.

A good agent knew how to cover her actions, and Veronica had been one of the best since he first became aware of her when he left Delta Force to
fight his way to Bartek. Aidan couldn’t believe how young she was, even now that he was looking at her with his own eyes. But she couldn’t fool him.

She could take all the day trips to the Palm Islands she wanted. The bitch could swim with dolphins, eat falafel and buy silk shoes while laughing her oblivious friend. All of it was a lie and Aidan didn’t have time to fuck around with her—he had two weeks to find the package. Veronica had three hours to tell him where it was, if she wanted a quick death.

Chapter Three

Sophie came to slowly. The silk wallpaper seemed off, like it was grayer than it had been before, fuzzy around the edges. She stared at the wallpaper, trying to see it as the expensive wrapping it was, instea
d of something alien in the room. She groaned, bit back the sound, then groaned again. Her head hurt. Her wrists burned. She jerked them forward, but couldn’t make them come in front of her.

She was tied to the bed.

Seeing the bonds snapped her to alertness. The muscles in her arms were screaming, and she wondered how long she’d been unconscious. The memory of the man in the mirror flooded her brain and she looked around, whipping her head wildly from one side to the other.

He came around the corner.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said. Naked pain flashed across her face, but she didn’t try to restrain it. Her father had said that to her as a child.

“Don’t rape me.” Sophie was shaking
and wished she was sober. She could feel the plastic ties abrading her wrists where they’d slipped down. They cut hard into her flesh, making it numb.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t rape you if you were the last woman on Earth and I had a hard-on that wouldn’t go down.”

She cringed at his harsh words and, despite the predicament she was in, part of her was insulted. He looked at her naked body like she was pizza that had been left on the counter for three days. Like she was something indelicate or disgusting that he was forced to exist in the same space with.

“Sorry if I jumped to conclusions,” she said, biting back her terror at the flatness of his eyes. They would have been beautiful if they hadn’t been so cold. “It’s just that you tied me naked to a bed.” To her horror, tears flooded her eyes. She didn’t like to be restrained in anyway.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Veronica.” He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I don’t want your body. Or your money. I just need you to answer one question for me, and then I’ll kill you easy.”

Ice flooded her body when she heard the word and she met his eyes with a snap. “No.” Sophie was grateful for the chill that swept her body, because it helped her stop tears from rolling down her cheeks. Looking to the left, she saw the window cut open and realized that the sea air sweeping in was making the temperature of the room lower than she could bear without clothing.

“No?”

“You can’t kill me. Please.” Sophie didn’t want to beg the man for anything, but she wouldn’t let him kill her. Not here. Not now.

“Where did you put the package, Veronica?”

“My name is Sophie. I don’t know what package you mean. I got a package at my new apartment in Rome with a table from IKEA. Is that what you want?”

The man shook his head and sighed, then slipped off his jacket. She could see the end of a tattoo near his elbow. “I hate liars,” he muttered, looking away from her as if Sophie disgusted him. “Where’s the package?”

“There is no package. Search everything. I don’t care.”

The man dropped heavily on the bed, making her body slip to the side. He twisted around to look at her and she noticed the strong flex of muscles in his torso. “I don’t want to torture you. Sure, you killed a friend of mine in cold blood. You almost killed me a few years ago. And I really fucking hate you and everything you stand for. But I don’t want to torture a woman.”

“That’s good,” Sophie said, meeting his eyes. “I really don’t want to be tortured.”

“I don’t relish the idea of you screaming in pain. Even the thought of you breaking and telling me the truth isn’t that appealing.” He didn’t break their gaze. “I don’t want to torture you, Veronica. But I will.”

He was terrifying. His strength, his flat expression, the stage makeup she realized he was wearing now that he was close enough for her to study him. The lines on his face were mostly fake, painted on. His eyebrows and lips were changed
, too. She didn’t recognize him, except as the man she’d thought elderly in the hall.

“What’s your name?”

“You know my name.”

“Humor me,” she snapped, twisting her wrist in the restraints.

“I’m Aidan. You’re Veronica. Where’s the package?” Sophie didn’t respond, just looked at him and tried to quell her shaking limbs.

“I’m not Veronica,” she finally said, the words bursting out of her. “I swear to God, I’m not Veronica. I don’t know what package you want. Oh, god. I don’t know. I don’t know. Please don’t do this.”

She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his face shut down even more. This wasn’t a bluff. Instead of responding, he reached into his pocket, cut the ties holding one of her hands and moved to pull it onto his lap. Aidan pressed down hard enough that she felt the delicate bones of her hand shift.

“Where is the package? I don’t believe in false starts. If you don’t want to answer this time, I’m going to dislocate two of your fingers. Then I’ll ask again.” He paused, waiting for an answer that wasn’t coming.

Sophie was sobbing in great, gasping gulps, trying to pull her hand away from him. The bed shifted under her desperate movements, but not enough. She couldn’t speak. He waited.

When she didn’t answer, Aidan sighed and moved his left hand until his thumb and middle finger made a tight vise around the base of her pointer finger. He squeezed hard, pausing for a moment when her sobbing gave way to a scream, and then her knuckle popped and her finger rested askew against the rough fabric of his trousers.

He took in her red, swollen face. Then he did the same thing to her middle finger. Regret flashed across his face so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. Sophie’s sobs became wheezes. She felt thick mucus build in her throat and swallowed convulsively, trying to breathe.

As she struggled for breath, he let go of her wrist and she pulled it against her body. Looking at him with wounded eyes, she pressed it tight against her to quell the pain.

Aidan couldn’t look at her. As much as he hated the toxic bitch, there wasn’t a single part of him that liked what he’d done. It was fucking terrible to hear her scream.

She was too young.

He’d tortured men without a hint of regret many times before
. Women gave in before the torture started, scared at the prospect. Veronica—Sophie, he thought bitterly—wouldn’t be like that. No, her operative training would have taught her to stand up to pain like this. He’d have to dislocate the entire damn hand, maybe a shoulder too. Hell, she might not tell him anything unless he used the knife.

“You know,” he said, wanting to try a different tactic, “I really admired you in the beginning Veronica.” He reached out and gently took the woman’s hand in his own, bringing her abused
limb back to rest in his lap. “I followed your career. I think my boss even considered trying to recruit you at one point.”

“Glad to know you like,” Sophie coughed and took a deep breath, “art history
lecturers.”

Aidan shook his head, then pressed down on the place where her finger was pulled out of the joint. She shook for a moment, then her head slumped. He realized that her hair was still wet from the shower.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” she finally said, raising those glowing blue eyes to pierce him. “Why are you doing this to me? My name isn’t Veronica. It’s Sophie. Sophie. Sophie. Sophie.” She chanted her name quietly as he stared at her. “Please don’t hurt me again. Please. I’ll never tell anyone. I swear to God, I’ll never say anything about this if you just stop hurting me.”

Watching her small frame shake with renewed sobs, Aidan experienced the first moment of doubt he’d had since he was recruited by Delta Force 12 years ago. In an attempt to brush it off, he tore his gaze from her and looked around the room. The stereo system was still playing easy listening music and he tried to focus on that instead of the sounds she made.

Letting go of her hand, he turned to watch her try to curl her fingers. She couldn’t.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.

“Stop fucking around,” he said, anger coloring his voice. “We have less than a month before the deadline is up on the Synthesis Agenda. If I can’t find what you stole by then, millions of people are going to die. Maybe more. All because you’re a selfish cunt who only cares about money.”

“I’m not—.”

“Stop talking. Maybe you don’t care about those people. That’s fine. What you should care about is what I’m going to do after I’m done with your fingers. Your wrists. Elbows. Shoulders. Knees. I hear they hurt the worst, but I’m not sure. I’d bet hips are actually more painful, but who’s to say you’ll be conscious after the knees?” He thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure you’ll even be conscious after the shoulders.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Won’t you even consider that I don’t know?” He admired the deep breaths she took to try to regain her focus. “I’m sorry if I got in the way of something. I don’t want people to die. I’m really, really sorry. But I. Can’t. Help you.”

Aidan stood up and stalked to the window, staring out at the restless sea. It was darker now and he could no longer see people walking on the sand. They were probably all out dancing, dining and enjoying the nightlife that had spent the last decade leeching any real culture from the city.

He thought about that because he couldn’t consider her words. And yet…she’d sounded truthful.

But she couldn’t be telling the truth. Because that would mean that Aidan had tortured an innocent girl. That he’d dislocated the fingers of a teacher who was on a summer vacation.

“If you aren’t Veronica, then why are you in Dubai? Most teachers don’t make enough money for a suite like this. Most don’t have a passport full of stamps from all over the world.”

“I’m not a primary school teacher,” she said. “I’m a traveling lecturer. I go from one school to another. Oh god, I travel and look at paintings. Cave art, even. Cathedrals. Anything that means I’ll have a job the next year. My best friend and I have been planning this trip for two years.”

“I think you’re lying. I saw your emergency contact information and I know where you grew up.”

“In Washington, DC?”

“Yes. With Lyle Wells III.”

He saw fear skate over her face at the mention of her foster father. “He raised me after my parents died. Did you do something to him?”

Aidan scoffed. “As if I could get close enough. He’s a clever fucker,” he hesitated, then continued, “Sophie.” He shook his head at his own gullibility. “I never knew you were his daughter though. That’s more fucked up than…almost anything. Who uses their daughter like this?”

“He isn’t using me.” Even in severe pain, her indignation was something to see. Aidan liked the way fire flashed in her eyes.

“Wells takes you in, trains you and then sends you into the kind of life where men with knives pop your bones from your sockets and you think he isn’t using you?” Aidan shook his head more deliberately, not looking away from her. Her crying had stopped and her body was no longer heaving. Sitting back against the shining cherry headboard, she almost looked like a young sophisticate instead of a captured terrorist.

He could see small shivers run down her body, but Sophie bit her lip until the skin turned white and they stopped as he watched. But the tears still welled in her eyes, even if they didn’t spill. Her control made Aidan admire her, in a strange way. She said something, but he was too focused on her eyes to hear it.

She cried.

The women he worked with didn’t cry.

“He works for a plastics company, you son of a bitch.” Her self-righteous tone pricked his nerves. Sophie’s chest rose and fell with her deep breaths, but she didn’t begin to hyperventilate. Aidan could tell it was close. “You have the wrong family. The wrong fucking family.”

“I don’t.’

“You do.” She looked at her hands, at the swelling purple bruises that seemed to float on her pale skin. “My hands. Oh god, you’re a monster. You’re a fucking monster.”

With self-righteous purpose, he’d pushed aside the glass and entered her room. When he slammed Sophie to the slick tile floor of her bathroom, he’d felt justified. Now he felt like the monster she named him.

Aidan’s problem was that he’d pictured this all differently. He remembered watching Veronica in a red wig in Beijing, how she chain-smoked, how she was so thin that she was almost transparent. The woman in front of him was all roses and cream
, flush with health. No tobacco stains clung to her perfect teeth.

He’d imagined questioning a hardened criminal. Not this woman-child who bit back her tears and swore that she wasn’t who Aidan knew she had to be.

She’d killed Dima, though, he reminded himself. The game they’d played for years as they thwarted each other ended when she dragged her knife over his throat and took the only thing that could prevent the horror he knew was to come.

If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have been content to spend ten more years chasing her across the world. Veronica had been a kind of
Xanadu for him, either two steps ahead or one behind, but endlessly fascinating. She’d been a challenge to Aidan. Someone to beat. Even when she almost killed him, he’d still admired her—until two years ago when she’d caused the death of someone he cared for. And now, when she killed the chubby, pale medical researcher with a shock of dark hair who probably hadn’t had a chance to defend himself. She’d managed to kill Aidan’s vendetta in the process, too.