Submit (The Underground Book 4) (31 page)

“Department memo. And she confirmed it in person.”

If that was true, it would soften the blow of losing her. “Please tell me you’ve already forwarded me the address for this safe house.”

“Yep. But you need to wait several hours before you make any moves. By nightfall, at least six other agents will also know her whereabouts. If you move too soon, it will point the finger right at me or the agent who drove her there.”

“Done.” Anton never intended to include Millings or Dayton in his next plans. Their job was to let him know what was happening behind the scenes. He’d used them for several small jobs, but he recognized their ongoing value to him. The last thing he wanted was for either man to be under suspicion.

»»•««

“Please tell me this isn’t happening,” Nikolav screamed. His face flamed with anger. He glanced around the room at Leo, Mikhail, Ivan, and Sergei. His best friends in the world.

They were at the clinic. He had let Belinda walk away from him four hours ago. And his entire world had been upside down since.

“How could Taylor move two of our women to a safe house without so much as consulting us?” His voice was loud, hardly controlled. He didn’t give a fuck that Katie and Haley were also in the room. What mattered here was where Belinda and Alena were.

“It would appear she did,” Leo stated.

“Fuck,” Nikolav yelled, turning around to slam his fist into the wall and then thinking better of it since this was Katie’s clinic.

“Didn’t you speak to Belinda yourself?” Katie asked. “I thought you and Sergei were at her cousin’s house.”

“Oh yeah, sure, I spoke to her.” He knew his voice was shrill, sarcastic. “It’s like she was brainwashed. In a trance. The way she pushed me away. I know we only met like twelve days ago, but I didn’t know the woman who got in that damn car with some FBI agent and drove away. She even told me she quit her job. And I’m not buying it. The woman’s spine was way too stiff. It was like she was reciting lines from memory.”

“And where was Alena?” Mikhail asked. “Shit. Fuck.” He set his hands on his head and tipped his neck back to stare at the ceiling.

“Already at the hospital. Ambulance took her.”

“She must have spent less than twenty minutes there because by the time I got there, she’d already been discharged,” Ivan muttered. His hands were fisted at his sides, and he looked about as angry as Nikolav felt.

“What was she thinking?” Mikhail asked the ceiling.

Nikolav held up his phone. “Spoke to Taylor about an hour ago, briefly. She has both women with her. Thank God because when I saw Belinda get in the back of that agent’s car instead of Patrick’s, I almost lost it. Taylor insists they’re safe and we need to calm down and give her time.” His voice rose again. If his phone weren’t his only lifeline, he would launch it at the wall and enjoy watching it shatter into a million pieces.

Hell, he hadn’t spoken to Belinda herself. Taylor could have been lying. The thought shook him to the core. He should have listened to his gut and taken Belinda with him, even if he had to do it with her over his shoulder kicking and screaming. She’d so completely shocked him that he’d been frozen to his spot as he watched her leave without so much as a glance in his direction.

“Give her time?” Mikhail shoved off the wall he’d been leaning against and paced the room, running a hand through his hair. “Doesn’t anyone else think this is suspicious? We know there’s a mole in the FBI. Why can’t it be Taylor herself?”

Sergei groaned. “It’s not fucking Taylor.”

Nikolav spun around to face him. “How the hell would you know? As far as I’m concerned, every single person we’ve ever spoken to could be the mole. FBI or otherwise. Hell, some people we’ve dealt with could have been FBI and we didn’t even know it. Or vice versa.”

Sergei shook his head. “It’s not Taylor. Think about it. She’s done nothing but help us for weeks.”

“Help us?” Ivan shouted. “How helped are we? We’re standing here fighting among ourselves while Alena and Belinda are God only knows where under the supposed protection of God only knows who.”

Sergei ignored Ivan and turned his gaze back to Nikolav. “What else did she say when you spoke to her?”

“Some shit about us meeting here and waiting to hear from her.”

Mikhail gasped. “Do you think we’re being set up? All of us gathered in one spot? Maybe we should get the fuck out of here. Separate, at least.” He reached for Haley and tugged her against his side.

Katie cleared her throat. “Calm down. Everyone. I agree with Sergei. It’s not Taylor. I’ve met with her more than any of you. I don’t believe it for a moment. Let’s give her a chance.”

“Do we have any other choice?” Nikolav shouted. “We don’t even know where she took them. We’re totally at her mercy.”

“And that’s a decision we have to assume the two of them made,” Katie continued. “Think about it. They both know the level of danger they’re in. And they were both present when two more of Yenin’s men were killed this morning. Yenin’s got to be livid. He’ll want retaliation. He’s likely to hire a hit man to pick us all off one by one. So, yes. We have to trust Taylor. And we aren’t dispersing. We’re gonna stay right where we are until we hear from her.”

Ivan spoke next. “I’m not buying that Alena readily agreed to head to a safe house without calling me.”

Mikhail spun toward Ivan. “I’m her brother. She didn’t even call me.”

Ivan pursed his lips.

Nikolav couldn’t unclench his fists or his tight jaw.

Katie continued to speak. “The important thing is they’re both safe.”

“Really?” Nikolav yelled. He didn’t seem to be able to lower his voice for any one sentence. His neck burned. “How can we know that? There’s a mole inside the FBI. Someone is fucking feeding information to Yenin. Could be the agent who drove her there. If he even
did
drive her there.
Fuck
,” he screamed. “I’ve never felt so goddamn helpless. Yenin’s probably already got someone watching that safe house.”

The idea tore through him like a knife, gutting him. No fucking way was Belinda safer under FBI protection than she was with him. He wasn’t buying it. And Ivan wasn’t buying it either, because his friend turned around and did exactly what Nikolav had avoided.

He punched a fist right through the drywall in Katie’s clinic. The group of them were gathered in one of the patient rooms. It was too small for all of them, even if they had been there for a game of twister, but under the circumstances—with everyone’s wrath out in the open—the space was way too fucking tight.

It was the only option, however. Standing in the waiting room out front where every single eye outside could clearly see them through the entire wall of windows wasn’t an option, either.

So they’d made do. And now there was a hole in the wall.

And apparently Alena was more important to Ivan than Nikolav realized.

Mikhail said nothing. He simply stood there with his lips pursed.

“Calm down. All of you,” Haley declared. “We don’t have other options right now but to wait this out. Arguing and punching things won’t change anything.”

Nikolav fumed.

“She’s right.”

Nikolav twisted around to find Leo leaning against the far wall, casually, legs crossed. He had one arm around Katie next to him.

“Pardon?” Nikolav asked.

He uncrossed his legs and stood taller. “Spoke to my contact before you got here. Both women are safe.”

Nikolav threw his arms in the air. “Great. Your contact. How the fuck do we know your contact isn’t the goddamn mole? Huh? Do you even know who the fuck your contact is?”

Leo leveled his gaze at Nikolav. “Don’t you dare fucking doubt me on this, Nik. You know me. We’ve been friends for a dozen years. I’ve been an informant for the FBI for over two years. I
know
my contact. And I trust him. So, you’re going to have to take my word on this, get over yourself, and accept the fact this one is out of your control.”

Nikolav tried to shoot daggers at his friend. “Accept the fact this is out of my control?” His voice rose with each word. “Are you fucking shitting me? Would you be all accepting if it were Katie the FBI sequestered somewhere without your knowledge? Huh?”

Leo blew out a breath, his shoulders falling. “No.”

“Then stop lecturing me about your fucking goddamn contact. Because as far as I’m concerned, the guy is no different than any other agent, guilty until proven innocent. Including Taylor.”

The last person he wanted to accuse of being a mole was Taylor, but he wasn’t thinking rationally. He was only thinking about the fact that his woman, the woman he’d finally taken to his bed a few days ago, was somewhere out there. Vulnerable. Exposed. Alone. And the agency protecting her couldn’t possibly do as good a job as him.

Sergei spoke again. “I don’t think it’s necessary to shoot the messenger.”

Ivan flipped out again. “The messenger? As far as we know, she’s the executioner.”

Sergei narrowed his gaze. “Has Taylor ever once given you a single reason to doubt her?” He stepped into the center of the room and spun in a slow circle to look at everyone. “Huh? No? Nobody has anything to say to that?

“I think you all need to calm the fuck down. I know I was the last person to meet Taylor, but you all have been extolling her virtues for a month now. It sounds to me like she has done nothing but run around protecting your asses night and day for that entire time.

“She has organized dozens of agents to follow you all over this fucking city for weeks. Yes, we all know there’s a mole. But that isn’t her fault. And she’s doing the best she can. Now, if she says she has this under control, and Leo confers that his contact has this under control too, then I say we give this poor woman the benefit of the doubt and cut her some fucking slack.”

Nikolav swallowed.

Sergei was right. There was no reason to accuse Taylor of sabotaging this situation. They had no evidence to suggest she wasn’t on their side. She had their best interests at heart.

But that didn’t soften the blow. Nikolav didn’t like the idea of Belinda spending even one night away from him. Ever.

He might not have been totally certain of that before, but he was damn sure now. He was totally in love with Belinda Gallo. And if anything happened to her…

“Sorry about your wall,” Ivan said to Katie. “I’ll fix it, of course.”

Katie nodded.

Haley tentatively wrapped her arms around Mikhail’s middle. “I’m sure Alena’s fine. Taylor said her wound was superficial. She’s a strong woman.”

“Damn right,” Ivan muttered, not lifting his gaze.

“Now what are we supposed to do?” Nikolav asked.

Anton had better shit to do this evening than chase a fucking journalist all over the city. He had only been back in Chicago twenty hours, and he needed to be in his lab making arrangements for himself to receive his own drug, not sitting in a dingy hotel room across the street from a safe house where a most irritating woman was holed up.

He couldn’t take the risk of Belinda Gallo escaping his clutches any longer, however. She needed to be permanently muted. The bitch was digging too deep. He had no doubt the FBI was right on her tail, but Gallo was an immediate threat. Besides, she’d pissed him off.

He’d expected her to arrive at her cousin’s house anytime between when she received that letter and five o’clock. What he hadn’t expected was that she would be stupid enough to go to the FBI first. And certainly not wily enough to slip through Millings’s and Dayton’s hands at her office without them knowing.

Her damn purse had a locator on it. Her computer had been hacked. And yet, she’d slipped out the door, leaving all her belongings behind.

He never should have underestimated the reporter.

He had no intention of intervening in tonight’s exploits. He’d hired men to handle the task of snatching her from the safe house. But after the number of fucked-up instances lately, he wanted to watch.

Another two men dead that morning. Idiots. It was beginning to seem that everyone he hired was incompetent.

The four men he’d contacted to raid this safe house and kidnap one, single, hundred-pound woman tonight could easily get the job done.

He’d had hours to make arrangements. According to Millings, Gallo was brought to this safe house at noon. It was after ten now.

He glanced out the open window again. He was situated in the hotel across the street from the apartment Millings insisted she was in. The blinds were closed on the window he knew to be Gallo’s hideout. The lights were on. But he could detect no movement. Not surprising. It was a safe house, after all. She wouldn’t be dancing in front of an open window.

Anton had opened his window halfway—in part because it was stiflingly hot in the crappy room he sat in, and in part to hear anything from outside that might be valuable.

One unmarked car sat on the pavement below with two men in it. They would be agents. He’d watched them for an hour.

His phone rang. “Chaz. What’s your time frame?”

“Moving in now, sir. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. We’ve surveyed the entire area. The two agents out front are the only ones guarding the apartment. We’re coming in from the roof. Set up our operation on top of the building next door. In through the roof. Back out through the roof.”

Sounded reasonable. But so did the last operation, and those men had failed miserably. “Get it done.”

Chaz ended the call. At least that was the name Anton knew him by. Could be anything, really.

Anton lifted his gaze through his binoculars to the roof. He saw nothing. As he would expect.

Silence. Long interminable silence. Deafening.

Not that Anton would be able to hear anything related to the abduction of Gallo, but waiting in such solitude seemed to last much longer than actuality.

Anton lurched forward when he heard a gunshot. And then a second shot.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, lifting his binoculars again as if he could see something.

This was not in the plan. There should have been no noises.

The men in the car below him jumped out, guns drawn, spanning the area in a crouch. One of them spoke into a mic at his shoulder and raced toward the building. He flattened himself at the entrance as the other man ran toward the side of the building and disappeared into the narrow alley.