Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Another day passed while he spent time out on the deck and she rested. Though she was loathe to admit it, Sophie needed the break from movement. It gave her head time to cl
ear after being slammed into the dash in the accident.

He came by twice more to feed her hot, spicy soups that burned her throat and soothed her stomach. Neither of them had much to say. Whenever he entered, Sophie would look anywhere but at him. While he fed her, she kept her gaze trained on the wall and accepted the food without a word of condemnation or thanks.

For the last two days, he’d been trying to get in touch with Oliver. Sarah, Oliver’s secretary, blocked Aidan at every turn. First Oliver was in transit, then he was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. “You know, Aidan,” she said the sixth time he’d called, “he’s an important man and he can’t just pick up every time you ring.”

“I know, Sarah.” No matter how much time passed, she still made him feel like the bruised up rookie that Oliver had brought into
Second Division four years ago.

“I’ve left him messages telling him to call you. Interrupting my day every three hours isn’t making him call you back any faster.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.” Aidan scowled, but didn’t let his frustration seep into his tone.

“Are you hurt?” Her voice took on a motherly mien. “Caleb came into the office and asked about you. He’s leaving for Japan
in the fall. Something with the Inagawa oyabun.”

“Last I heard, that guy was on our side.”

“He is,” Sarah replied, and he could almost hear her filing her nails. “I think it’s more Oliver hiring you boys out to do some damage control for him.”

“Tell Caleb I’ll tag along if you see him before I do.”

“I almost certainly will,” she said tartly. “Bye, Aidan.”

“Sarah, wait.”

“Yes.”

“If Caleb comes back in, ask him to get in touch. I know he’s still in deep cover, but if he made it into the office, he
should be able to call.”

“Got it,” she said.

“Thanks.” The call disconnected and Aidan wondered if he could leverage his help with the Yakuza against Caleb’s help with Sophie. Every moment he was stuck with the prim college girl, he was losing ground on Veronica and the package.

He needed to get Sophie into Iran without her causing a scene on the docks. The problem weighed on his mind, because he no longer
held Adele’s life over her head as leverage. Plus, he’d been too solicitous of her the last few days. Aidan was sure she knew that he didn’t want her dead—the threat had lost its power.

A screaming blonde trying to tear away from him wasn’t going to be something the police could overlook. He sighed and watched the clouds part, letting sun stream through to sparkle on the water. Though he knew now that she wasn’t the right woman, he still couldn’t let her go until he got the okay from Oliver. That meant he needed a way to get her to the new car.

Global disaster was imminent and he was stuck on a raft with a bunch of small time conmen. Frustration ripped through him and he wondered again why Oliver had sent him after Veronica now. He’d argued with his boss, explaining that the only place he needed to be was tracking down another way to stop Synthesis from being released.

No, Oliver had insisted. They had to get Veronica and
retake the information she’d stolen.

Aidan
gripped the railing and thought he could almost make out the shore in the distance. He just didn’t know if he had enough time.

Sophie had been trying to keep track of the endless moments that passed while she laid on the lumpy mattress, wishing for a book. When Aidan fed her, she stole glimpses of his watch, trying to orient herself. Couldn’t be more than six hours before they’d reach port. And when they did, she was going to run.

Leaving with him seemed logical when she was drunk, scared and injured in her hotel room, but now she was acutely aware of just how at his mercy she was. Whatever his endgame—whatever her intentions—she couldn’t stomach it.

The worst thing that ever happened to me, she thought with a wince, was two years ago. That night still haunted her dreams, was burned into the back of her eyes every time she closed them. This situation wouldn’t even be a blip two months after she was away from him. It didn’t compare.

She stirred, wanting to speak to him, and fluttered her eyes as she pushed them open. Aidan wasn’t fooled by her charade, she could tell, but he stayed silent and didn’t mock her. Sophie wiggled her hips, then stretched as best she could.

“Are we there yet?” She smiled when his lips turned down in a glower.

“I thought there weren’t going to be any more questions.”

“I thought I was going to have a nice vacation with my friend, not get kidnapped by a psycho who can’t tell one girl from another. We all make mistakes.”

“We’ll get there when we get there,” Aidan said, settling back into the chair. Salt air reminded her of Dubai and her thoughts drifted to
Adele, who was probably already on her way home.

“Where are we getting a car?” He didn’t respond, and Sophie sighed. “Can you please
uncuff me and take me for a walk? My legs feel funny.” He’d only let her be free in the bathroom, and only because there was nowhere else to go.

“No.”

She considered and rejected begging. Aidan didn’t like it when she laid down and looked whipped. His eyes lit when she fought back.

“Do you want something to eat before we dock?” he asked. “We probably won’t be able to get provisions for a day or two.”

“I could use more soup,” she said softly.

Sophie didn’t want to be too friendly, because he’d know that she was on the verge of making a break for it. Of course he had to be expecting her to try to get away. Unless he saw her as broken, with the dark bruises, puffy lip and wound just below her headline.

So she’d eat the soup and then she’d throw herself into the arms of a friendly police officer and beg for help. She’d be en route to where she was needed before he had a chance to react.

Aidan ladled a scoop of clam chowder into a bowl, disappointed that it wasn’t something Sophie would like. She’d mentioned earlier that week that she only liked salmon and shrimp, that the rest of the ocean was a cesspool.

He’d finally come up with a way to get her off the ship and to the car, but by the time she was sitting beside him and heading north to London, she’d hate him again. The quiet truce between them for the last few days had been a relief. One dark spot was that she’d almost entirely stopped talking and he’d found that he actually liked to hear her thoughts. He liked her company.

Aidan hated to lose it again.

His interest in her life was a red flag that he needed to clear before moving forward. From the first moment he’d looked at her clearly, he’d felt something.

Nothing huge—not then—not enough to keep him from executing her if Oliver ordered him to. But she’d raged at him and pressed herself against him in the lobby, moaned against his mouth. To save her friend, he reminded himself. Just to save her friend and not because she wanted him.

Still, she’d moaned in his arms and looked dazed when she pulled away. And it was a hell of a kiss.

The bowl of chowder warmed his hands as he walked back toward their room. More than a week in the car with Sophie would be unbearable if she didn’t speak except to ask questions he couldn’t answer.

She just didn’t understand, he thought, frustrated. If he let her go and she said something to the wrong person, it was all over. Her adopted father’s organization would
scatter, change call signs and codes. Then Aidan wouldn’t be able to stop the Synthesis Agenda

A
lot of people would die. He wasn’t sure he could live with that.

He opened the door by balancing the chowder on his forearm. Sophie’s lip was bleeding again.

“I accidentally bit it,” she lisped.

He set down the bowl and gently cleaned the wound with a napkin, pressing it softly against the torn flesh.

“I didn’t mean to bust your lip,” he said before he could stop himself.

“I’m sorry?”

“I mean,” Aidan was already frustrated, wished he hadn’t said anything. “I didn’t think you’d see me before I grabbed you in the bathroom and then I couldn’t contain you. I was just going to grab you. Not beat you.”

Her face darkened, the color rising in her cheeks. “It’s nice to know that you didn’t want to
hurt me before you tortured and murdered me.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “May I please have my soup now?”

“Do you want to feed yourself?”

“No. I’ll just throw it at you.”

He nodded and sat, spooning soup into her mouth until the bowl was half empty and her eyes were fluttering closed. She slumped back against the headboard and he put the bowl aside as a whistle blew somewhere on the ship. It was almost time to go.

Chapter Eight

Iran

Bubhehr was a small, crowded port city that smelled like rich spices and salt from the ocean. Before the boat had docked, the scent was already overwhelming and Aidan, with great difficulty, maneuvered Sophie into a padded canvas tent
bag.

She was going to be furious when she woke up, he knew, but it wasn’t like they were on their way to being best friends in the first place. It was the best way to get to safety without attracting unwanted attention.

The powder he’d mixed into her soup would put her in a dreamless, deep sleep. Even knowing that, he worried while he carried her through the docks on a luggage cart. Aidan imagined her waking, twisting in her handcuffs. No matter how many blankets he’d used to line the bag, it couldn’t be comfortable.

Three years before, he’d snuck a hostage out of Spain in the same bag. She’d co
nfessed on the long trip home that she still couldn’t stand confined spaces.

Alexa had been like him, though, cold to the bone. Sophie was different. She gave all to protect the people she loved, but she wasn’t strong enough to bounce back and put it behind her. Knowing that fucked with his head, because he hated to be the person who’d caused her to warp.

Every time he’d walked into the cabin after she admitted to being scared of the dark, she’d been staring blankly at the wall. When he realized that, he’d opened the blinds, hoping that she’d like being able to see glimpses of the azure sea.

While he melted into the crowd, then turned and headed north for his car, Aidan allowed himself a moment to wonder what it would have been like if they’d met somewhere else. If he’d been more like her.
Undamaged.

“You can’t keep knocking me out.”

Her head and limbs felt packed with cotton, and her body was sore from the way he’d transported her. When she’d first woken up, she’d leaned her head against the glass window and watched the landscape fly by. Cutting through populated communities, the highway that wound through Iran reminded her of the sun-scorched deserts between California and Mexico. Sophie lapsed dreamily into a memory of her father letting her select the music for the trip to Los
Sonjoras.

She woke again in the dark and Aidan was humming to a song on the radio. The lyrics were French, something about love and the moon. Of course he couldn’t carry a tune, but he kept singing until her head was pounding.

“Can you shut up?”

“Sorry,” he said, lapsing into silence.

Once her head was clear enough for her to pull herself up in her seat, she turned to face him. The effort exhausted her, made her head loll on her neck as if her spine was cooked spaghetti. “What did you do to me?”

“I got you into the car without having to chase off a crowd of concerned men.”

“How?”

“Sleeping powder. You’ll be fine in a few hours. Not even a headache.”

“Damn it. I really fucking hate being drugged.”

“You’ve been drugged before?” She answered his question with a glare, then they both lapsed into silence. When the music ended, Aidan reached out and twisted the dial, shutting it off.

“Who drugged you?” Each word snapped from his lips, crisp and angry.

“
No one,” she said. “It was just an expression.”

He quickly glanced away from the road to check her expression. She smiled at him, wondering just how much influence the drugs he’d given her was still having on her system, because she felt okay for the first time in a long time. Sophie closed her eyes and thought of her father.

“So how do you manage to live all over Europe on a teacher’s salary,” he asked, awkwardly trying to continue the conversation.

“
My parents weren’t hurting for money. When they died they left most of it to us.”

“How did they die?”

“Car accident. They dropped me off at ballet when I was ten and I was standing outside the studio with my best friend, waiting to go in. The ground shook. I saw a fireball. They were gone.”

He didn’t know what to say in the face of such a flat explanation, so Aidan focused on the mountains and waited for her to continue. The dark peaks mirrored his mood, put him on edge. He wasn’t sure whether he had enough left in him to drive through the night.

Sophie spoke. “The police told me later that a gas truck driver had been drinking and ignored a stoplight. The funny thing is, his truck was fine. The problem was with my mom and dad’s car. The impact caused an explosion. Ironic, I guess, that it was with a gas truck.”

“It must have been hard to lose them so young.” He loved his parents, though his work meant he couldn’t stay in close contact with them.

“It was. I don’t remember it, honestly. I just remember the heat and running to the car. I knew it was them from the second the ground shook.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I remember a man grabbed my shoulders and held me back, kept me from running straight into the fire. My knees were covered with blood later. Must have fallen down in the gravel. It was so hot that the metal on the car melted.”

“Where did you go after that?” He realized that he wasn’t going to be able to continue much longer, though he hated to break the spell that made her come alive and speak to him.

“Lyle. He took care of me. He and Dad worked together. Best friends for life kind of thing. Both Army guys.”

“It’s hard to imagine Wells taking care of anyone.”

Her eyes snapped to his. “If you knew him at all, you wouldn’t say that.”

He kept his thoughts to himself, though his hands were so tight on the steering wheel that his knuckles went white.

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Right, Aidan. Because I haven’t already figured out from your tattoos that you were in the military. Oh, and I bet I’m too stupid to figure out that you work in intelligence. Even though you thought I was a spy or a terrorist.”

Aidan, who was known for his silence and composure, had revealed too much to her. Something about her made him careless. Maybe it was what he’d done to her, thinking she was as much a monster as he. Remorse crept in around the edges when he started to get tired. With an internal groan, he took an exit.

“Listen, Wells is bad news. When you get back to your real life, stay away from him. You’re not safe as long as he’s in your life.”

“He’s not the one who took me from my hotel room.”

“Maybe not, but I tracked his calls to Veronica and that’s how I found you. I don’t know if she’s using a cloned phone or if my information was fucked up or how I found you instead of her.”

“No one like that would have anything to do with Lyle.”

“You’re wrong. He doesn’t just have something to do with her. He trained her.”

Sophie’s eyes lit with curiosity. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s no secret that he’s a major player. We’ve had information for months that Lyle and The Hellenic Agency are planning something nasty; I don’t know if I can stop it without finding Veronica.”

As the word left his mouth, Aidan realized that Sophie could be more than just a temporary hostage; she might be a valuable source of information. She had grown up with Wells, after all.

“Do you remember any women coming to the house? She’d look kind of like you, but maybe five or ten years older. She’s a smoker.”

“He had lots of women over, but I’m pretty sure that none of them was a terrorist.”

“You might be surprised. Most terrorists look like normal people.”

“He wouldn’t associate with someone like that.” He loved her prim tone, but Aidan wanted to disabuse her of her notions.

“He does. I swear to you, he does. I’ll prove it to you, if you’ll let me.”

“How?”

“Pictures of them together. Pictures of him in places he shouldn’t be.”

“Fine.” She seemed to deflate. “But I still think you’re wrong.”

“I wish I was.”

She watched the muscles in his forearms tighten as he steered the car through the empty streets. Aidan looked like he was close to falling asleep; the stress was affecting him more than she’d realized. When he stretched, she caught a better glimpse of the tattoo on his arm and wondered how far up it went, whether it stretched across his broad back.

As inconvenient as it was, Sophie was a realist and refusing to admit to herself that she was attracted to him wasn’t helping anyone. She shifted in the seat and felt the heat between her thighs intensify. Pulling her gaze away from him, she focused on the apartments that lined the street.

“I guess it just bothers me that you’re so sure he’s a bad person, especially with everything you’ve done.”

“I’m not a good man,” he said, “but everything I do, I do to protect people who can’t protect themselves.”

“Including what you did to me?”

“If you understood…you’d see why I rushed in and refused to believe the obvious truth in front of my eyes. Your damn face and hair are so much like hers.”

“Understood what?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why? If I’m involved, then I already know. If I’m not, then I’m basically a dead woman walking anyway.” She took a deep breath, fully aware that she might not live through the next few days. The thought had flitted on the edges of her mind, but she’d rejected it and focused on her anger and, in a sick way, on him.

Now, though, she let it wash through her. She closed her eyes and counted to three, then let it go.

“You’re not a dead woman.”

“I might be. Don’t lie to me, please.”

“I’m going to fight for you, Sophie.” She turned back to him and saw him looking at her, then back to the road. Truth was in his mossy eyes, along with something she didn’t want to think about.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want you dead. Part of keeping you safe is not telling you everything. Isn’t staying in the dark worth your life?”

“I’m not sure it is. Not if other people are at stake, too. What if you’re right and Lyle is involved? Maybe I could help you find what you’re looking for.” She knew that it wasn’t even a possibility, but she wanted Aidan to open up to her.
He was different than she’d thought.

“It’s not a fucking video game
. You don’t follow the clues and find the treasure, then turn it off and go back to your comfortable little life. You don’t have what it takes to make it in this kind of world.”

“How do you know that?”

“When I slipped in the bathroom, you could have taken me down fast. You didn’t. I slipped, and you let me live.”

She lifted her hand to her mouth and rubbed her fingers over her lips, considering his words. “Maybe it didn’t occur to me to kill you. Maybe I’m not that kind of person.”

“I know.”

“Are you a good guy or a bad guy?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.” Suddenly it felt urgent that Aidan tell her how he classified himself.

“It’s not that simple. Good, bad…it all depends on the day of the week. You’d probably consider me good. Others would see me as bad. Neither of you would be totally right.”

When he’d started in the Army and been
selected for Delta Force after four years, he’d considered himself wholly good. Serving overseas hadn’t shaken that image, nor had the first years with his elite squad. But things became gray and he left after a mission went bad and he found a way to get to Bartek.

Then Oliver approached him and offered him another opportunity. No part of him wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t say no either. Not after what had happened.

“So how do you see yourself?”

“I’m just a man,” he said. Sophie wanted to ask more, but he was at the end of his rope, so she let it go. After a few minutes of silence, the car swerved.

Sophie bolted to attention to find Aidan shaking his head, forcing back the sleep he desperately needed.

“No way, Aidan. Either you stop for the night in the next five minutes or I’m driving.’

“I wouldn’t let you behind this wheel for all the gold in Cairo.”

“No. I’m sorry. You can hit me. You can drug me. You can force me away from my first real vacation in years and threaten to kill my best friend. But you’re not going to get me into two car accidents in one week. Not going to happen.”

“You aren’t in change here.”

“Maybe not. But if this car wrecks again, I will stop being cooperative. I will immediately run as far away from you as I can get and you’ll have to go explain to your precious boss that you were too stupid to get rest.”

He sulked, but took a turn and pulled into the parking lot of a hotel. Turning off the engine, he slumped back in the seat and she gave a silent prayer of thanks.

“Why did you think I’d run away from you when we got off the boat?”

“Wouldn’t you have?”

“I was planning to, but I reconsidered it after
awhile. I guess I hadn’t made a decision yet.” The motor clicked as it cooled and she examined the rundown two-story motel.