Danger Close (23 page)

Wade spared a glance at Erin, who helped Schafer into the other empty chair and stepped back toward Wade, casting him an uncertain glance that told him she had no clue why they’d been summoned here. Wade curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her next to him, not giving a damn that the move was possessive or what anyone thought of it. He hated that Erin was about to witness the dark, ugly side of the covert world of espionage.

“I wanted them both present to hear everything, since they both almost died today,” Robert continued. He glanced again at Wade then went back to glaring at Bill, who stood frozen in place, looking like a trapped animal. Wade realized that his pulse was racing, aware that they were all about to hear the unthinkable.

“You’re close to retirement, Bill, and the Rahim case was going to be your send-off. But everything went to hell when the Sec Def got captured and Wade made the only call he could have. You couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stand the thought of not being the one to break the case and bring Rahim in. And when leads weren’t turning up fast enough, you got desperate. So you decided to stop trying to bring Rahim in, and let him come to you instead.” His eyes cut to Wade. “Using the bait you knew Rahim couldn’t ignore.”

Erin’s gasp sliced through the deathly quiet in the room. Wade tightened his arm around her, taking comfort in her presence even as the truth of it exploded inside him. He’d trusted Bill—as much as he’d ever trusted anyone in this business, for a long time, and that’s why it hurt so much.

You mean the same way Rahim trusted you?

Wade shoved that thought aside. They were two different things entirely.

Bill let out a short, humorless laugh. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Pinning him with a withering glare, Robert called out to someone waiting outside. “Aaron.”

At the mention of the name, Bill’s face paled and he swallowed. Wade glanced at the door in time to see a young guy in his early twenties step into the room, looking nervous. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, casting a guilty look at Bill.

“This is Aaron, one of Bill’s hand-picked interns. Bill’s had him making some interesting phone calls over the past few days, hasn’t he, Aaron?”

The young guy swallowed and looked around helplessly, and it was obvious to Wade and probably everyone in the room that Aaron hadn’t realized the magnitude of what he’d been doing, let alone the illegality of it.

“Turns out Aaron didn’t think the calls were that secret though, since someone overheard one of them,” Robert continued.

Wade’s gaze shot to Schafer, who frowned and nodded in confirmation. “Yeah, I told Wade already.” Schafer glanced up at him for affirmation, and Wade nodded to Robert.

The director cocked his head and studied Bill, who at last looked uneasy. “You had him call someone in Rahim’s network, but you didn’t tell him who it was. You had Aaron pass on little tips the network might find useful, knowing they’d eventually funnel up to the top of the food chain because they had to do with Sandberg, the agent formerly known as Jihad. Things like his travel itinerary from Bagram to Kabul and the location of the safe house here. You made Aaron believe he was passing on that info to someone on the security team, when in fact you were using him to help dangle the lure you knew would bring Rahim out of hiding.”

In the taut silence that followed, all eyes were glued to Bill. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, face pale, body tense. He knew he’d been caught, but he wasn’t going down that easily. Wade ground his back teeth together, careful to keep from squeezing Erin too tight as his muscles bunched.

“I didn’t know if anything would come of it or how it would pan out,” Bill muttered defensively. “I didn’t know how they’d use the information, or if it would—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Robert barked and Bill fell silent. A muscle jumped in the director’s jaw and he seemed to struggle to regain his composure for a moment. “I’m not really interested, but anything else you wanna say? Maybe to the three people in this room you nearly killed this morning?”

Bill’s nostrils flared but he didn’t look away from Robert. “Not without my lawyer present.”

Robert made a sound of disgust, picked up the handset on the desk and dialed a number. “Come get him.” He’d just placed the handset back into its cradle when two Special Protection Officers came in to read Bill his rights as they cuffed him. In the vacuum of silence that followed after he was taken from the room, Aaron spoke up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at each of them individually. “I honestly thought I was telling the security team.” He swallowed, took in the blood on Wade’s shirt and Schafer’s hoodie and jeans. Turning his gaze back to Robert, he frowned. “The security team. You said—”

“All dead,” the director confirmed. He met Wade’s stare. “Found the three others dead in one of their vehicles about a half mile west of the house.”

Aaron sucked in a ragged breath and dragged a hand through his hair, looking shaken. “Jesus, I’m sorry. So, so sorry, I…” He trailed off, looking sick to his stomach and Wade actually felt bad for the kid.

“Go down to the conference room,” Robert told him. “We’ll need an official statement from you. And you, if you’re up to it,” he added, looking at Schafer.

“Yeah, of course,” Schafer said, though it was clear from the looks of him that he should still be lying down in the medical area.

“Okay, then let’s head down to—” Robert paused when someone else knocked on the door. “Come in.”

The door edged open, revealing another employee Wade recognized but couldn’t remember his name. The man nodded at Wade before speaking to Robert. “Something just came in. It’s big.”

Robert eased onto the corner of his desk and waved the man in. “Shut the door. This is Chris Pollock,” he told everyone. “One of the heads of our covert ops division.”

Pollock closed the door behind him and looked questioningly around the room, his brows drawn together in a frown.

“Go ahead. This involves all of them, so they deserve to know.”

Pollock raised his eyebrows at that and cleared his throat, clearly surprised to divulge this kind of intel in front of civilians. “Probable hit on Rahim’s location.”

Wade stiffened and released Erin’s shoulder, took a step toward Pollock before he realized what he was doing. “Where?” The word came out low, raspy, a surge of raw adrenaline punching through his bloodstream.

Pollock met Wade’s gaze. “You Sandberg?” When he nodded, the man continued. “Intercepted a phone call about thirty minutes ago. From a ship entering a harbor here in Virginia, not far from DC. Low level radioactive reading on board from what we can tell, but the call was between two men speaking in English, and the voice print is almost a dead match for Rahim. Port authorities have been alerted and we’re getting teams together.”

Excitement raced through Wade’s veins. Rahim was finally
here
, within reach. Wade could feel it. He wasn’t letting the bastard slip through their fingers again. Not this time.

“How sure are you it’s him?” Robert asked.

“Eighty percent,” Pollock answered.

“What about you? You ready?”

Wade turned his head and met the director’s cool stare. The man knew exactly how much he wanted this, what it meant to him, and that despite the fucked-up way Bill had gone about it, Wade was indeed the best bait for this shark. “More than.”

Robert stood and nodded as though he wasn’t surprised. “Come with Chris and me. Schafer, you go down to the conference room with Miss Kelly.” He strode for the door. Wade hung back. Erin was bending to help Schafer up, but Wade took her by the arm.

She looked up at him, and the pain and fear he saw there hit him like a kick to the solar plexus. “Give us a minute,” he said to Schafer, and pulled her out of the room. This far down the hallway it was quiet, and while they didn’t have complete privacy, it was as much as they were going to get. The moment he closed the door behind him she stepped back and wrapped her arms around her middle in a gesture of self-comfort. Wade set his hands on his hips and tried to think of what the hell to say. There were no good alternatives.

“You’re really going after him?” Her voice sounded small, uncharacteristically shaky.

He nodded, not knowing how to explain it to her. This thing between him and Rahim had always been personal. Now that he’d ordered a hit on Wade that had nearly cost Erin her life, it was even more so. “I know him best. He wants me almost as much as he wants to wage war on American soil. If he’s here, I’m the strongest currency the agency has to bring him out of hiding.”

She swallowed, blinked quickly a couple of times and it twisted his heart to know she was battling tears on his behalf. “So you’re going to what, sacrifice yourself? Stand out there and offer yourself up as human bait so they can bring him in—”

Wade stepped up close and curved a hand around the back of her neck to silence her. She bit her lip and lowered her gaze, hitching in a ragged breath that tore through him. “It has to be me. Can you try to understand? The risk he poses outweighs everything else.” Even his life, if necessary. He tightened his fingers slightly, desperate to get through to her, to make her see why it had to be this way. But goddamn it, he hated leaving her, hated going with all this uncertainty left between them.

He pushed out a breath and leaned his forehead against hers as the emotions bombarded him. Anxiety. Longing. An overwhelming sadness that this might be the last time he got to touch her. He didn’t know what to do with it all. “I never expected to fall for you,” he whispered, his throat tightening.

Her head jerked back and she stared up at him with those huge green eyes swimming with tears.

“I didn’t,” he insisted, feeling awed and bewildered at the realization that this woman meant so much to him. “You’ve made me feel things I never thought I’d—” He broke off, swallowing. Caressing her nape with his fingers, he cradled her cheek in his other hand and stared into her eyes. “It didn’t matter to me before if I lived or not, so long as I got him, but it’s different now. You matter to me, and I’m going to do everything in my power to come back for you. Okay?”

A tear slipped down her cheek, followed by two more, and his heart squeezed so tight that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Erin took his face in her hands, gently shook him once. “I love you, Wade. Do you understand that? I fucking love you, and I don’t care if it’s too soon to say it or if it freaks you out. It’s how I feel, and if you don’t come back I don’t know how…I don’t know how I’ll…” She made a choked sound and flung her arms around him, burying her face in his chest as the silent sobs shook her.

Silently cursing at himself, Wade crushed her to him and pressed his nose into her hair. She was no doubt thinking about David and how he hadn’t come back, and panicking that Wade wouldn’t either.

He’d never expected her to say she loved him, but fuck, it filled him with such a fierce possessiveness that he thought his heart might explode. He’d only had two of what he’d classify as serious relationships before going undercover, and what he’d felt for both those women didn’t even come close to what he felt for Erin. He wrestled with his own feelings, struggling to make sense of them all. If love meant wanting to protect Erin from anything and everything that tried to hurt her and wanting to wake up next to her every single day… If it meant not being able to envision a life without her in it and being willing to stand by her through everything that came at them, including taking a bullet for her, then yeah, he loved her. The realization shook him to the core.

“I’m coming back for you,” he whispered fiercely. Part of him called himself out for being a chicken shit and not saying the words back to her, but he’d already bared his soul to her in a way he never had with anyone else. And he didn’t want to say them now in case he didn’t make it back from this. It would only make it harder for her to let him go. “I swear I will.”

She nodded and clung harder, the strength of her grip surprising him. He loved the feel of her holding him so tight, pressed up against him like this, and wished they had more time.

“Sweetheart, I gotta go,” he murmured, regret in every word.

Erin squeezed him one last time and leaned back to cup his cheek. Her eyes were still wet, her dark lashes spiky with tear stains on her cheeks. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

I love you, sweetheart.
His heart pounded with the fierceness of it.

Reaching up to take his face between her hands, Erin leaned up and gave him a tender, hungry kiss. Wade met it eagerly and drove his tongue into her mouth to taste her, caress her in this intimate way, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time. When he heard voices behind them down the hallway, he eased back and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

“You look after Schafer for me,” he told her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Biting her lip, she nodded, her eyes haunted by shadows he couldn’t erase. “Hurry back.”

“I will.” If he survived the coming battle, he’d move heaven and earth to get to her side, and spend the rest of his life earning the right to stay there.

The rig rolled away from the docks with a rattle of its trailer and exhaust streaming from the stacks on either side of the cab. From his hiding spot amongst some pallets stacked behind a medium-sized warehouse on the busy wharf, Rahim watched it cross the railroad tracks and make the turn onto the access road. The two-lane strip of asphalt would take it directly to the highway and onward to its final destination. Letting out a relieved breath, he lowered the binoculars.

Port security had been every bit as tight as he’d expected. He’d purposely had the device hidden in a container full of medical equipment to lower suspicion if the authorities happened to check inside or scan it with their mobile x-ray unit for radiation. By now, someone had to know he was trying to get into the U.S. Luckily, his container hadn’t been chosen for random inspection, likely because the importer the container was assigned to wasn’t flagged in the U.S. database. And they definitely wouldn’t be looking for a device in the food delivery truck he had waiting a few miles away. Some of his most trusted men were overseeing the transfer. He’d planted them months ago to work at the delivery company to ensure everything was in place. And now it was.