Lie with Me (30 page)

“He’s a pro, Sky. He’d consider …” Cam stopped and then, with a shake of his head, continued, “He’d consider taking his own life before …”

She blinked, her body numb, mind reeling. There seemed to be no good way out of this. “In the meantime …”

“You’d be safest in the CIA’s hands.”

Watching Cam, his face couched in shadows, unshaven, his eyes focused, she was aware of just how big the man was. How strong … how deadly, when the situation called for it.

Shadow. On the fringe. Warriors in a dangerous game where right and wrong depended on the team you played for.

She wrote about these men, yes. Had grown up with one. But seeing it play out in front of her—this was nothing she’d ever wanted to experience.

Delta Force operators were no angels. But black ops were altogether different. Deadly. They could rip the soul from a man if he wasn’t careful … and in the course of writing her books, she’d spoken with men who hadn’t been careful.

“I need to be alone for a little while,” she told him.

She walked to the bedroom without looking back, heard the dead silence in her wake, which she attempted to close out with a firm push on the bedroom door.

Once inside, she sat on the bed, pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped one of the quilts around her, because she was shivering again.

DMH has your father—and they’re after you
.

This world she was thrust into was like the dream she’d once had of plunging into a frozen lake and finding herself trapped underneath the ice. No matter how hard she pushed or swam, she could only see the world through the ice, couldn’t breathe … couldn’t get warm.

She’d been surrounded by terror, literally frozen with fear when she’d woken—ironically, drenched in sweat even as she shivered.

It’s the meds
, her first doctor had assured her.

And Sky had that dream, on and off, for the next five years, even after switching medicines.

But it appeared it was a harbinger of things to come. She was being stalked by a secret group of trained assassins. And there was another group who claimed to be on her side—who remained just outside her reach on the other side of the bedroom door.

All she had to do was decide where she’d be safest.

All she had to do was figure out if the man she’d fallen in love with was the real deal.

C
am knocked on the door to his room after an hour. He didn’t think Sky would invite him in, but she did, calling to him through the closed door.

She was sitting in the middle of the bed, blanket pulled tight around her. He jacked up the heat on the thermostat before he sat next to her.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he started.

“So I was right. DMH wants to use me as leverage,” she said slowly, her eyes averted—staring at the carpet or her toes, he wasn’t sure which. “And he’ll die before he lets that happen. Like Dylan said, if he’s not dead, they’ll always be after me. Do you know what a horrible feeling that is? What a horrible choice?”

“It’s not your choice, Sky. It’s your father’s.”

Her voice shook as her gaze lifted to meet his. “Cam, whether he talks or not, they’ll kill him. And he’s got to know that.”

Cam didn’t deny it. “The only thing I can do is keep you out of harm’s way. It’s what he’d want—that much I know.”

“And you’ll do that, even though you hate him.”

“Make no mistake about it, Sky, I’m doing this for you. Only for you.”

“I can’t let them kill my father.”

“There’s nothing you can do about that. I’m sorry.”

“But there is something. You can save him—I know you can.”

“First of all, I don’t even know that. Beyond the fact that saving him puts you in direct line of fire—forgetting that for just a minute, based on everything else we’ve talked about, how can you ask me that?”

“Because you’re probably the only one who can help him now.”

Her words were a cross between a demand and a plea, and the anxiety welled up inside of him. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

She touched a hand to his cheek. “But I do. And I’m asking anyway. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t.”

“Sky—”

“He risked his life for me.”

“Of course he would.” He paused. “Wait a minute, you don’t mean …”

Realization dawned as she began to speak. “I know where my father was five months ago.”

She’d lifted her shirt and was pointing to her scar.

W
hen they’d landed, Dylan found a message from Cam about a missing doctor and immediately put Zane on the case.

“If DMH has her …” Riley began, and then trailed off. “Never mind—see what you can find out.”

And so Zane headed into Manhattan while Dylan and Riley rented a car to drive the last three-hour leg of the trip to the Adirondacks. He’d meet them there when he was done.

First stop, the hospital. Zane drove around the large, underground lot until he found the doc’s car easily enough—broken into, for sure, and roped off by hospital security, but the assholes hadn’t done anything smart like call the police.

“We paged the doc, figured she was in surgery,” one of them said with a shrug.

No one had reported her missing. The doctors in her hospital were pissed she hadn’t shown up for her shift, the nurses said it wasn’t like her. But her patients, they were worried. Upset. And that told Zane everything he needed to know about what kind of woman Dr. Olivia Strohm was.

Next stop, the doc’s apartment. Across town, an odd choice for someone who worked as much as she appeared to. It was a doorman building, but he got in easily enough—slid past the guy while he was helping someone hail a cab.

She lived on the third floor. She had no deadbolt on her door, which helped him immensely.

Her place was … clean. Stark. Probably the best piece of furniture was a brand-new, king-sized bed, which looked comfortable as hell. But otherwise, there wasn’t much in the way of decor beyond a standard couch, a small TV … and not a hell of a lot of food in the fridge.

Doc didn’t spend a lot of time at home. Well, hell, neither did he. He knew what demons he was trying to outrun—wondered if Olivia Strohm had the same issues.

Just then, his phone began to ring. He expected Dylan, and groaned out loud when he saw it was his other brother. The human lie detector and moral compass of the entire free world. Straightlaced as hell, like he had a stick up his …

“Hey, Cael.”

“What are you balls deep into now?”

Cael was like the father Zane never really had, because their father had lived his life much closer to Zane’s way of doing things.

Where Cael was strict, old school—where it came from was something Zane wondered every once in a while, especially when Cael pulled that daddy shit. “Things are cool.”

“What does Dylan have you involved in?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

Zane stared at the picture of the young woman, flanked by what looked like her parents, then moved on to a more recent one of her standing next to her mom, although whoever took the picture focused on her.

Her eyes were dark, piercing, like they held a million secrets tight and still they managed to shine like diamonds. And she was laughing.

Her perfume lingered over the entire apartment, even though it was by no means anything more than a light scent, citrus-based. He hadn’t noticed that before, but now he knew it would stay with him after he left.

His fingers brushed the back of the picture frame—noted that the cardboard felt as though it bulged. Although he had no right to, he justified checking it out with the reasoning that he was trying to save her life.

It was a newspaper clipping. It looked well worn, as if she—or someone—had read it a thousand times. As if she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Worrying about it.

It was dated twenty-four years earlier.
Abducted Girl Escapes Her Captors After Three Weeks
.

Olivia Strohm, aged nine.

Jesus H. Christ
. His heart thudded in his chest.

“I always worry when you’re not working. Military work,” Caleb added. “Not working for Dylan.”

Zane felt dizzy, managed, “He keeps me honest.”

Caleb laughed, a short, biting sound. Zane slid the picture out of its frame and flipped it to see hand writing. Last year’s date and the words
Laugh more. Love, Dad
. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. They’d need to show it around, and it looked recent. “Got to go, Cael,” he told his brother, hanging up before Caleb could impart more words of wisdom.

He was dialing Dylan as he let himself out of the doc’s apartment.

E
lijah watched Olivia through the monitor set up in the living room.

She’d bargained that morning for more medicine and supplies to help heal Gabriel. Had dutifully dressed his wounds, only to have a bigger mess on her hands later that evening.

“Why do you keep torturing him?” she’d asked Elijah earlier, oddly calm thanks to the first round of drugs she’d recently been given, and of course she couldn’t know what DMH was about. It was neither to her benefit or detriment in terms of her survival … whether Dr. Strohm was of consequence to his organization remained to be seen.

“Why do you do what you do?” he answered her question in kind, avoiding answering.

“That’s not the same thing at all.”

“You’re right. Your profession tends to give people false hope. Mine, not at all.”

She’d looked stunned for a moment, then her eyes sparked fire, despite the drugs. But she didn’t say anything more, had never spouted the usual
You won’t get away with this
nonsense.

She knew better. But she was fighting. Not physically, no, she hadn’t attempted any kind of escape or fight with his men. But she was emotionally fierce … the way her brow furrowed, even while she slept, as if she was constantly thinking on how to get through her confinement the best way she knew how.

She was hanging on to hope.

He could tell her that it was the worst choice to make, that hope was really for the weak and that there was so much more Olivia could do with her skills.

She intrigued him, the first woman to do so since Mariana. That alone made Elijah wary, almost had him allowing her to be absorbed into the skin trade and sold for a good price to whomever would take her once Gabriel and Skylar were eliminated.

She would make him a small fortune. But no, she would stay with him in the organization and he would utilize her profession. He could keep her on a tight leash. And he would personally escort her to the next location—her training ground before she would be allowed into one of the exclusive clinics, reserved for those patients who could pay a steep price for black market organs, and for those who donated theirs, by choice or by force.

Olivia Strohm would give them quite a bit of trouble, he was sure. And he would make sure he enjoyed it all.

CHAPTER

17

F
or a long moment, Cam stared at the scar that ran along Sky’s side, his mind racing.

It was so fucking obvious—and something he’d never considered.

How could he hate the man who saved the woman he’d fallen for? And yet, he did. “I hate him, Sky. If he were here right now …”

His hands were fisted in front of them and he clenched them even more tightly. Until she laid her hands over them and said quietly, “I know, Cam.”

“I hate talking about this with you. I hate that you know.”

“Know what, that you have emotions?” Her hands remained on his, rubbing lightly. “I know those were supposed to stop existing when you became a soldier, but hey, it can be our secret.”

He stared at her. “How the fuck are you taking this so calmly?”

“I’m not.” She pulled her hands away. “But it’s nothing I didn’t know already. The thing is, Cam, you hating him means that you also hate a part of me.”

He swallowed hard. “I couldn’t hate you. I wanted to …”

“When you look at me, how are you not going to see him? How is that not going to come between us?”

He didn’t have an answer.

“Can you let it go?”

How? How could he do that?

The only thing he could promise was that he’d do the right thing. “We’ll find your father. We’ll save him.”

From there, it would be anyone’s guess. “You know I could never have hurt you.”

“I know you could’ve, from the second you found me,” she countered. “You told me so yourself that first night. But if those men hadn’t been after me …”

“I would’ve left you.”

She flicked her eyes toward his, but didn’t say anything.

When he spoke again, it was with a tightness in his throat. “Five months ago, your father gave you a kidney. Five months ago, your father freed me from service. Your illness saved my ass. If Gabriel had pushed me at that point, I would’ve snapped. Broken.” So, in truth, he owed her everything. “I’ll do whatever you need.”

“Cam.”

“I said I’d do what you need—I’ll save your father. I owe you.”

She blinked, but it wasn’t nearly enough to hold back the tears. “The fact that you’d do this … that means—”

“Don’t. All it means is that I haven’t turned into a fucking monster.” He paused, and then, “What’s he like?”

It took her a second before she realized what he was asking. “You mean, my father?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s funny. And kind.” She shifted as his gaze never wavered from hers. It was probably nothing he wanted to hear, but it was important to her that he know the truth. Her truth. “He could be cold and distant … usually after he’d been away for a while. It was like it would take him a while to get back to normal.”

He nodded slowly. “Sometimes it does. It feels like everyone’s moved on and you come back and it’s different and you’re different.”

“So the distance, it wasn’t anything I did?”

“What? No, not at all. There’s nothing you could’ve done to make it better either. It just takes time.”

“Is it always like that for you?”

“Pretty much every time. Sometimes worse than others.” This, this talking about Gabriel, was a mistake. He didn’t want to know that Gabriel brought donuts to his wife and daughter, read stories to Sky at night, normal at home, cold-blooded in the field.