Page 14 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

“I’m thinking.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he deadpanned.

I sent him my best scowl, which wasn’t effective with him. I don’t think I had any powers over him at all, which sucked.

He turned his attention to the intel as he adjusted his shoulder holster, which I knew rubbed on his left side, and sighed. “So you did some thinking, and?”

Zach’s concern about this op was clear in the furrow of his brow, the set of his jaw, and the way he kept flicking through the surveillance as if attempting to solve a puzzle. He’d turned the victim photos face down, as disturbed as I was, but we knew we’d have to analyze them at some point. He glanced at me, with his all-knowing expression as if he could see right through to my soul and to the horrors I’d hidden deep down. I didn’t want to see any kind of realization dawning in his eyes as he put two and two together and thought I might have personal knowledge of a man like Clarke. Sanctuary had identified this new target, and the shock of seeing the case files overwhelmed me, but I forced myself to push past the rising tide of emotions. There was no room for weakness, no time to dwell on the past when the present demanded our full attention.

Clarke. The name wasn’t familiar; I didn’t know him, but I knew his type, and thinking about him conjured images of pain and humiliation I had long sought to forget.

“He deserves to die,” I murmured, and picked up the photo, trying to make sense of the clear image, seeing the same cruel features from my nightmares.

“Our job is to get him out alive and hand him over.”

“I know.”

“We’re not assassins.”

“I know.” I focused back on the task at hand with steely resolve, channeling my anger and fear into a single-minded determination to see this mission through to its conclusion. I continued. “Clarke might think he can hide what he’s doing, but we’ll neutralize security with some fancy-ass darts, drag him out, and let the authorities work their magic.”

“Exactly,” Zach murmured.

“We’ll take him and his little party of sex traders down on time and within budget.”

I kept to the jokes, and after a while, Zach stopped staring at me as if he’d seen something in me that confused him. The last thing I needed was Zach, patron saint of undercover agents, trying to figure me out. I was determined we’d become a team to be reckoned with, which was the reality I wanted to work with. Not him knowing any of the things I’d burned and buried along with my father and my uncles.

Zach can’t know the truth, doesn’t know about the demons that haunt me.

I’m not telling him now.

Because then he’d know me.

And that was terrifying.

“Three plus target.” Simon at Sanctuary comm was on point tonight, counting down bad guys, letting us know what we had left to achieve. We’d started at seven, four incapacitated with yep, fancy-ass darts, and with three left, plus our target—Clarke—we were getting this shit done.

Zach held up his clenched fist, and I stopped, freezing in place as a guard sauntered past, unaware of us only six feet away. Then, when Zach gestured right, I slipped through and took the wing, crouching low and moving silently.

The air crackled with tension as we crept through the shadows. Clarke’s place was nothing like the compound I’d grown up in, a house more than a series of bunkers, but somehow knowing he was in there made me recall every moment of my childhood. A stupid, vulnerable, bright-eyed kid.

As we neared our target, my thoughts slowed. We had everything in place, an extraction team ready to remove Clarke after we captured him. That was the plan, and I fully intended to follow each step, but being here made my nightmares real, and the urge to confront Clarke head-on, then stab him in the fucking chest, was overwhelming.

Zach gestured my way, then with a nod I carried on to the right, each of us taking a different route to infiltrate the house. My heart pounded, my senses alert to the slightest sound or movement. I had the guard who’d passed us unconscious and restrained in an instant.

“Two,” the disembodied voice in my ear confirmed.

Two plus Clarke.

Guard two was on his phone, sloppy, unaware of me heading his way. Even the snap of undergrowth as I mis-stepped went unnoticed. But one prick to his neck and he was out for the count.

“One,” Comm counted, “Zero,” they added, as Zach must have dealt with the last of the ring of security.

That left Clarke alone in his house, which had an underground space. We’d go in, retrieve him, plant the software that allowed Sanctuary comm to access encrypted files, and be done.

An easy in-out.

The night was heavy with anticipation as Zach and I approached the back door of the beach house, our movements synchronized. Security was neutralized, surveillance was down, and all that stood between us and our bad guy was a thin barrier of wood and metal.

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