EDGE OF SHADOWS: The Shadow Ops Finale (Shadow Ops, Book # 3) (16 page)

“What about Rose?” Billy said, knowing he should be asking about the future of his team first, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to know that someone would be searching for Rose, that she wouldn’t be abandoned like he’d been forced to abandon her in Razgravia.

“No news,” Teresa said. She looked back at her instruments, fiddling needlessly with buttons and knobs.

Susan placed her hand on Billy’s arm and squeezed. “There are reports of bodies inside the building. It will be a few hours before they can get in to retrieve them.”

He swallowed hard. Once. Twice. Pulled away from her touch. “Bodies?”

“Initial count is over a dozen.”

“That’s way too many for a legit business that time of night. There should have been a few security guys, max.”

“The owner told the locals that he had a new shipment to process, were running behind, so they had a shift working overtime.” She hesitated, and he knew there was more bad news.

“What?”

“Billy. Understand this is all unconfirmed, based on initial interviews, it might be all wrong—”

“Susan, tell me. What else happened?”

“One of the workers stepped outside for a cigarette, saw everything through a window. He survived—with severe burns. But as they were taking him to the hospital, he made a statement. Said a woman who matched Rose’s description took the other workers hostage, demanded to see their records and equipment. When they showed her they were a legitimate waste disposal business, she went crazy. Shot a few, locked the rest in a storeroom then planted the explosives.”

He stared at her, his face ice cold, body numb. It took a moment for him to remember how to work the muscles around his mouth. “No. That’s not true.” He shook his head. “Rose would never…”

“I’m sorry, Billy. So sorry. I warned you about how unstable she was behaving—”

He stepped back, out the door, needing distance from her words. Chase awkwardly moved aside, gave him space. “I don’t believe you. Who is this witness? I want to question him—”

“He’s in surgery at Memorial Medical Center,” Teresa supplied in a soft voice. “But I have the report from the sheriff’s deputy who took his statement.”

“Reports can be faked—”

“Billy—” He hated the pity in Susan’s voice. “I’m sorry, really I am. But as of now, Rose Prospero is a fugitive. Considered armed and dangerous. Until we verify one of those bodies is hers.”

Chase straightened at that, ready to jump into the fray, but Billy waved him silent. He hauled in a breath, steadied himself, and faced Susan dead-on. “And my team?”

She frowned. “We need to debrief everyone involved, confirm that Rose acted on her own. The NSD will take lead on that since they’ll be deciding what, if any, charges are brought.”

Leaving the fate of his people to a bunch of damn lawyers. Like hell. “Are you disbanding us? Taking us into custody?”

She stared at him long and hard, then jerked her chin, obviously making up her mind. “No. Not yet. But call in all your operatives, have them ready to speak to the NSD. In the meantime, I’ll tell my colleagues on the oversight committee that we’ll need to delay any decision. It will be a hard sell, believe me. They’ll probably want to hear from you as well. Once word of what happened in Savannah gets out, well, I might not be able to stop them. You need to be prepared for the worst.” She glanced at Teresa and Chase. “All of you.”

Since the worst had already happened, losing Rose, preparing for anything else was easy. Billy nodded his understanding. “If you'll excuse me, I obviously have work to do.”

His office was thirty seconds down the hall. He made it in ten. Only after he
’d shut the door and stood before the large-screen TV that served as his computer monitor did he ask the questions he never wanted to ask.

Could Rose be dead?

They hadn’t found her body. But no one could survive that inferno.

Finally, he asked himself the question he wanted to ignore…wanted to pretend away…Could Rose have done what Susan suggested? Could she have betrayed her team, everything she stood for? Snapped, finally pushed too far?

His hands clenched so tight his nails were ready to draw blood.

No. Never. Not Rose...

Focus, Price. You’re in command now.

People depended on him; the entire team would be looking to him for leadership. He couldn’t let them down. Couldn’t let Rose down.

Billy raised his clenched fists. Felt powerless to open them. So he did the next best thing. He smashed one into the nearest TV screen, then pivoted and used the other to punch a hole in the wall behind him.

A haze of red engulfed him as he proceeded around the office, pounding his fists into anything he found. Twice before in close-quarters combat a similar berserker fever had overwhelmed him. Both times it had saved his life, given him the edge he needed to survive.

This time there was no human enemy to vent his rage on. He needed carnage, loud, shattering carnage.

Anything to drown the despair and fury. Despair that he had lost Rose. Fury at himself—he had never found the courage to tell her what he felt, to reveal his emotions.

Coward. One TV screen shattered with a quick jab, the one below it with a sidekick that sent a rain of glass and plastic over Billy. Another hole in the drywall, this time from a kick, a quick sweep of his hand sent his espresso maker and china cups flying through the air.

Then he stopped. A single large mug had survived his wrath. A thick, ugly Baltimore Ravens mug that had no business anywhere near the delicate porcelain coffee set. It stood, waiting for its owner to return and ask Billy for a refill. Billy’s entire body trembled as he drew a deep breath. He extended a hand, touched the mug as if afraid it wasn’t real, then caressed it.

Billy Price, former Delta Force, who had once held his dying best friend in his arms without shedding a tear, hugged Rose’s mug to his chest and collapsed to the floor.

Chapter 17

“I’m really worried about him, Chase,” Teresa said after Senator Payne left. She pulled Chase down the hall to Billy’s closed door. “Hear that?”

Chase balanced his crutch against the wall. He’d have to be deaf not to hear the thundering crashing coming from the Team’s second-in-command’s office. Not to mention the cries of fury, grunts that sounded inhuman, and finally the sound of a man choking on tears.

“I’ll take care of it,” Chase assured Teresa. He wished to hell he had an idea how. KC was safe—thank you, God! Would that make Billy look at Chase and feel worse?

Teresa touched Chase’s arm, reminding him he wasn’t alone in this.

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Tears crowded her words. “And I don’t care what anyone says. Rose was no traitor. She’d never betray us.”

She left to return to her post in communications. Chase stood in the empty hallway. At the far end of the corridor, Rose’s office door stood open as always, as if she might come rushing out, some new insight or plan gleaming in her eyes, at any minute. In front of him, Billy’s closed door, the wood doing little to mask the anguish of the man behind it.

A few minutes ago, after seeing KC alive, safe, unharmed and on her way home, all Chase had felt was elation. Then he heard about the awful cost this mission had extracted. He glanced at Billy’s door. He knew exactly how the man felt. If something had happened to KC, he would have acted the same.

But, still, there was a team to lead, missions to prepare...a funeral to plan. Maybe. They hadn’t actually recovered Rose’s body, not yet.

What if they were all wrong? What if this had been a trap, set by Grigor? Maybe he was working with the Preacher’s group and had demanded Rose as payment?

For the first time since he’d heard about Rose, Chase felt a ray of hope. Grigor had more to gain by keeping her alive than killing her—and Rose wasn’t easy to kill. She might very well still be alive.

At least he had something to offer Billy. Chase opened the door to Billy’s office. He stepped inside, then stopped. Aw, hell.

The place was a disaster area; an F5 tornado wouldn’t have done as much damage. But that wasn’t the worst. Chase pivoted and shut the door behind him. Only then did he approach Billy.

The older man was slumped against a wall, knees drawn up, head and hands sagging in a posture of defeat. A purple and black coffee mug dangled from his fingers. Rose’s cup—the only Ravens fan on the Team, she’d taken a perverse pride in using that mug every chance she got.

“Billy,” Chase said.

“Get out,” came the muffled reply. No heat in the words. As if even that had been drained from the man.

This was worse than he’d imagined. He’d seen Billy effortlessly function under stress at an almost superhuman efficacy. Edge was his nickname in Delta Force. Chase was former Marine Force Recon. He knew if fellow members of your team gave you a name like that, you’d had to have done a helluva lot to earn it.

“Billy, I think Rose might be alive,” Chase said, uncertain what else to say. He could just walk away, give Billy time to come to grips with his grief, but they didn’t have time. The Team needed a leader. They had to track down Grigor and the Preacher’s people before they could implement their plans.

Billy didn’t look up. “No, she’s not.”

“It was a trap. Think, Grigor has no reason to kill her. He would have ordered his people to keep her alive.”

In a strike faster than a cobra’s, Billy was on his feet, one arm pressed against Chase’s throat, forcing him off balance, his back to the wall.

“Shut up!”

Ah, a spark of life left. Chase decided to run with it. Even with one leg in a cast, he was still more than a decade younger than Billy. He used his crutch to sweep one of Billy’s legs out as he rammed his head into Billy’s chin.

Billy staggered back, quickly caught his balance, and came after Chase, swinging.

“How can you give up so easily on Rose?” Chase taunted. “I never would if it was someone I loved.”

That earned Chase a jab to the belly, followed by a shove against the desk. Chase landed, protecting his injured leg, but the impact still was painful enough that the next blow he aimed at Billy, an uppercut to Billy’s jaw, carried the weight of his pain.

Billy stumbled back, eyes dilated with battle fury, and Chase braced himself for a fight he might not be able to win. Then Billy blinked, his gaze coming back into focus. Chase caught his breath and extended his hand. “Pax?”

Billy staggered for a moment as if re-orienting himself, ran his tongue over his teeth, checking to see if they were all intact, finally took Chase’s hand. “Yeah.”

His voice wasn’t quite back to normal, but close enough. Mission accomplished.

“So how do we find Rose?” Chase asked.

“We don’t.”

“What? There’s a chance she’s alive. We can't, we can’t just—”

“She’s dead, Chase.”

“How do you know? How can you be so sure? If she made it out alive before—”

“That’s how I know.” Billy blew out his breath, slumped back against the wall, his hand snagging the coffee cup from where it had rolled under a chair. He curled both hands around it, his fingers stroking it as if it was a living thing. “One of my last missions with Delta, we intercepted a computer from a high-profile member of Saddam Hussein’s family.”

“What’s that have to do with Rose?”

“When Grigor held her those nineteen days, he filmed what he did to her, what he had his men do to her. He shared the recordings with men with similar tastes, traded them.” Billy practically spat out the words. Now there was a definite edge to his voice, and his eyes were devoid of anything but hatred. “Including our target. I watched them, Chase—it was part of the job, I had to. Christ, the things he did to her—”

“Billy—”

The older man shook Chase’s sympathy away. “She never knew I knew what happened to her. But I saw something that changed my life. The way she refused to yield, her strength, presence—in a warped way, it was beautiful. She was beautiful.”

“You fell in love with her.”

“Yeah, kind of. Sick, isn’t it?”

“You never told her?”

Billy shook his head. “No. Think of how she’d feel—knowing that I’d seen what he did to her, that I watched that. She’d think I was a pervert. And there’s no way she’d let me stay on here if she knew how I felt—so I settled for second best. Keeping my mouth shut and working with her.”

“Why don’t you want to go after her? Why are you so certain she’s dead? A woman who could live through that once—”

“That’s why,” Billy cut Chase short. “Surviving that once, no one would ever go back to that again. Rose would kill herself before she’d let them capture her again. Especially now that she has the Team to worry about. She’d never allow Grigor or the Preacher’s people to use her against us.”

Chase couldn’t really argue with that. But, still, he couldn’t believe Rose would've taken the easy way out. It just wasn’t like her. Maybe he just wanted her to still be alive, so he refused to accept the truth.

Knowing what horrors awaited Rose if she was still alive, Chase thought maybe Billy was right. It would be better if she were dead.