Deceptive Treasures: Slye Temp Book 5 (13 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Seoul, South Korea

The minute their private jet lifted off from Incheon International Airport into the still dark skies over Seoul, Tanner’s chest muscles finally loosened.

Zero-four-forty hours
.

His team was safe.

They’d survived that goatfuck of a mission
and
climbing inside a Russian sub with two DPRK defectors in tow. And oh yeah, one uncategorized pain in his ass.

Now he was finally headed in the right direction on a Gulfstream G550 arranged to transport his team and North Korean guests home.

But Jin wasn’t a guest.

She wasn’t persona non grata. Yet
. But maybe on her way to be.

Sabrina had blistered the airwaves when Tanner called to explain their extra passenger
. She was quick to question if Jin hadn’t caused the problems with their exit strategy in Pyongyang. In Sabrina Slye’s mind, that put Jin squarely under the heading of enemy until proven otherwise.

Not that Tanner could argue
. Or would even try with Sabrina on a tear.

He’d have been saying the same things in Sabrina’s shoes if he’d assessed the situation from the other side of the world
. But he’d spent time up close with Jin and, if he had to swear while hooked to a lie detector, he’d say he believed Jin wanted to defect.

The part that would register as truth would be his
belief
in what she’d told him. That, however, did not prove anything about her actions.

What if she was a trained agent
? If that was the case, why had she helped them escape when she could have walked them into a trap at any point? No one had worked any harder than Jin at finding a way out of North Korea.

But something niggled at Tanner
. An itch of suspicion that he couldn’t let go of, something that kept him from accepting her as just a defector.

In fact, Jin
wasn’t
technically a defector.

Not until the State Department decided she was eligible and no threat to the US. Things had changed significantly since the days of rubber-stamping anyone who begged to defect.

Logan Baklanov walked down the aisle from where he’d been talking to the pilots. He dropped onto the sand-colored, cushy armchair next to Tanner’s matching one. The chairs would recline when they were ready to sleep. All the window shades had been pulled down to keep the interior dark once they hit sunrise.

He should be asleep like the rest of his team sprawled all over the luxury cabin, but his body hadn’t hit crash point yet.

Speaking of crash, that was the wrong word to be thinking right now with the luck, or lack of, he’d had since setting foot in Pyongyang.

Logan leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees as the jet continued to climb
. “You are one lucky mother,” Logan said.

Were Tanner’s thoughts tattooing themselves on his forehead?

He started to argue, but his men and the two physicists
had
survived the escape. Instead, he said, “Thanks to your connections. And just how did you get a Russian sub to pick us up? Especially since your entire family has relocated from Russia to the US.”

“I’m doing a favor for someone in a position of authority in the Kremlin,” he said cryptically. “It’s a delicate matter and I’m close to repairing a blunder that will save the entire country embarrassment and a potential conflict with another government.”  Logan gave him a that’s-what-I-do shrug
.

“I thought you ran ops with your HAMR teams
. Sounds like you’re more a negotiator or international diplomat.”

Logan didn’t smile, but it was there in his eyes
. “Words can often be as powerful or dangerous as a weapon. My friend had a sub in the area to begin joint maneuvers with China’s navy in two days. He told me he’d let his sub give your team a ride as long as I assured him they wouldn’t have to engage the DPRK.”

“That’s why he didn’t surface until the Korean forces turned around and headed home after blowing up our patrol boat.”

“Right. They knew he was out there, but they don’t want to mess with Russia or China.”

“You took a helluva gamble.”

“Not really,” Margaux Duke argued, entering the conversation as she sat across from them on a sofa.

She smiled at him
. “I told Logan that worst-case scenario, you would unleash your secret weapon and take the risk of starting a third world war.”

Tanner smiled for the first time in what felt like days
. “Nick?”

She nodded, grinning.

“We’re all lucky that submarine captain has a sense of humor.” Tanner rubbed his aching head.

Logan, who
had
been smiling at Margaux, his not-quite-fiance-but-more-than-girlfriend, turned a dark frown on Tanner. “What the hell happened?”

“Nick tried to convince the captain to teach him how to drive the sub, but the captain just grinned at him.”

“Hell.”  Logan shuddered.

Margaux burst out laughing and, in two seconds, Logan was back to smiling again.

She was now part of Logan’s HAMR Brotherhood. From what Sabrina had told Tanner, the HAMR Brotherhood was made up of teams in places all over the world, and had been only men until Logan took on Margaux. But the men on his personal team had no trouble accepting her after all she’d done. She’d helped Logan escape after being tortured in a South American jungle, then she’d taken one for the team in a terrorist attack in Seattle last year. Logan did covert work for INTERPOL sometimes and had used those contacts to create an identity for Margaux that allowed her to disappear.

Someone from her past wanted her dead.

That person had better never go up against Logan or anyone from Slye. Margaux might be part of HAMR now, but she would always belong to Sabrina’s team.

Tanner recalled their last parting and asked Margaux, “How’s primitive life?”

“I keep trying to explain to Logan that my idea of roughing it is a hotel without a flat screen TV,” she quipped, cutting a look at Logan that caused him to smother a laugh. Margaux hated anything that smacked of camping and Logan spent as much time in a jungle or wilderness as he did in civilization.

She was one dangerous operative and more than capable of defending herself, but
Logan was in a league of his own and would bring the world down on anyone who touched her. They were crazy in love, even if their relationship made no sense to Tanner.

She’d walk through fire for Logan and wanted only him, but she drew the line at walking down the aisle
.

The man who figured out women would rule the universe.

The plane leveled off into cruising altitude.

Margaux scooted forward to the edge of the sofa and kept her voice down now that the engine noise was a dull drone
. “What’s the deal with your girl?”

Jin wasn’t
Tanner’s girl
.

He ignored that just as he’d been ignoring the silent figure sitting in the dark at the rear of the open cabin area
. He explained, “Like I told Sabrina, Jin showed up with intel that the mission had been compromised, then had a way out of Pyongyang through the tunnels.”

“That could be a stroke of luck,” Margaux said, thinking out loud
. “Or a set-up.”

Tell me about it
. That conflicting thought had bounced back and forth in his mind to the point his head should have dents from the inside.

Tanner had the time during this trip to Los Angeles, then the leg to Atlanta, to figure out what he was going to say in his report about Jin
. He’d have to hand over all three North Koreans to Sabrina when he reached Slye Temp headquarters located near the Atlanta airport. Sabrina would transfer them to the person she’d cut the deal with in the State Department.

Someone who did not want his identity known, so the transfer would happen in the underground offices at Slye Temp
. Street level was a corporate security business, but missions were planned for national security in the basement operations center beneath the offices.

Jin, Pang, and Har would vanish the minute Tanner handed them to Sabrina
.

Once that happened, no one on his team, including him, could say a word about this trip or those three
. Ever. Sabrina would bust a blood vessel if he so much as hinted at wanting to know how it turned out for Jin.

Margaux twisted to her right and stretched her long neck, staring at the back of the airplane.

Now what?

She flipped back around and told Tanner, “You going to recline her chair or make your prisoner fly the whole way sitting up?”

What kind of asshole didn’t consider that?

Me, I guess
.  

“Thanks, Duke,” Tanner muttered.

She grinned. “At your service.”

It grated on him to thank her for pointing out his lack of consideration for the
prisoner
. Margaux liked to be right and he hated to admit when she was.

Guilt jumped up and slapped him in the face.

Jin had dragged him and his team through tunnels they never would have found and he hadn’t said two words to her since landing in that life raft.

Tanner stood, feeling every minute his banged-up body had endured to get here
. Jin
would
be asleep by now if he’d taken the time to check on her and get her comfortable, but he’d been avoiding any show of concern for her that might be misconstrued.

And why was he beating himself up
?

They’d only been in the air about ten minutes.

He knew why. He’d intentionally been avoiding anything more than professional contact with her, and he was doing it for
her
welfare even though he couldn’t point that out. His report on how she’d aided their mission would carry more weight if no one got the idea that he was sympathizing with her.

Using the tiny, ankle-high lights, he walked quietly down the center of the dark airplane to keep from disturbing the others, but they were all in deep sleep
.  

Blade had set up Har in the private area just past where Jin sat
. Not totally private right now, since Tanner had not allowed Har to close the door. He wanted to be able to see the lump back there on a sofa.

Pang was in the front, just as gone
.

Tanner had separated all three of them as soon as possible.
Standard Operating Procedure.

Everyone had been given an hour in a hotel to shower and change into clothes Margaux supplied. She’d taken Jin into a separate hotel room and stood guard while Jin washed the salt and grime from her skin and hair
.

Margaux had tried to engage her, but Jin gave only one-word answers.

Jin had walked out of the hotel room with her dark brown hair twisted up in a knot, giving Tanner his first good look at her. She had freckles. Not many, but that little sprinkle across her nose surprised him. He was having a hard time getting them, or the silver-blue eyes out of his mind.

Blade had checked the cut on her head and told her to keep it clean, but remembering how she’d gotten the injury backhanded Tanner with another slap of guilt.

As he walked up to Jin’s seat, he took in the soft, blue warm-up pants and gray sweatshirt she wore, and her slender wrists, bound by flex-cuffs. Also standard operating procedure. She was huddled into herself. Was she still cold?

Her hands were in her lap and clenched so tightly her knuckles had lost color
.

What was wrong with her?

Panic over an unknown future?

He gave an internal headshake
. She was the one who’d refused to provide more than her name being Soo Jin, no last name. Before they’d boarded the jet, he’d pulled her aside and warned her that any hesitation to share information on her part would not go well.

Her answer
? “You know as much as you need to know about me.”

Should he play the tough guy again and warn her how bad it would be when they reached Atlanta if she didn’t cough up something the State Department would consider usable, or go the nice guy route and cajole her into giving up a few nuggets of information to see if she had anything of value to offer
?

She chose that moment to lift terrified eyes that smashed any chance of his playing the tough guy.

He moved over to squat in front of her. Her face was as pale as her knuckles and she was shaking. He asked, “What’s wrong?”

She clamped her jaw, refusing to answer him
.

“Look, I told you what you need to do for us to cut you some slack.”

“I …”

“You what?”  He leaned close
. “You can tell me.”