Page 23 of Covert Vengeance

“Ready.”

“It’s SuckMyRussianDick.” A burst of feminine laughter followed. They must have gagged their target, because only garbled sounds answered.

Amber didn’t so much as grin. She was in work mode, completely focused on her task. “Copy. Entering now.” Amber typed in the phrase and accessed the account. “I’m in. Stand by for transfer.”

Ninety seconds later, every cent from his account had been transferred into the offshore one she’d set up for them. “It’s done. Can you confirm?”

“Confirmed.” She could hear the smile in Zoya’s voice. “Dumping target, then we’ll meet you at the RV point. Glad to have you on the team, Amber.”

“Yeah, bye, Amber,” Hannah chimed in.

“Roger that.” She shut everything down, packed up, and headed to the RV point, a twenty-minute walk on foot. She tracked their vehicle on her phone, but several minutes from the meeting point, the beacon stopped working.

Amber stopped too, and found a safe spot to contact them. But no one answered.

With the RV point only a few minutes away and no way to contact her team, Amber had hurried to the northwest corner of the intersection where they were supposed to pick her up.

But another team was there to meet her instead.

Five armed thugs had swarmed her in a coordinated attack. And Amber had realized the truth.

Zoya and the others had done this. They’d sent her here to die.

Pulling out of the painful memory, Amber drew in a shaky breath, not even feeling the heat of the water beating down on her. Even now that betrayal cut deep. Her chest ached, her heart heavy. So much had gone wrong after that. She’d sought and taken her revenge, and then learned too late that Hannah might have been innocent.

In a horrific twist of irony, Amber had sold Hannah out too, betraying Hannah the same way she had been.

It was too much. All the pain, all the betrayal and anger and regret, all the fear and grief… The wall that had held the tide of emotion in check for so long suddenly ruptured.

All this time she’d been seeking revenge against the people who had betrayed her. Now those Valkyries were all dead—including Hannah, whether she was guilty or not. She’d thought their deaths would free her somehow. Ease the bitterness inside her. But it hadn’t.

A picture of Hannah formed in her mind. Lying on that cold, concrete floor, head shorn, face and body beaten. She might have been tortured first. Raped. Her final hours had been spent in pain and fear, not knowing how or why she’d been captured in the first place, and Amber still hadn’t been able to ascertain whether Hannah had set her up or not.

My fault. All my fault.

Amber’s chest constricted. Her shoulders jerked.

She bit down hard to keep the sobs in, but the force of them burned her lungs and hurt her ribs. The hot water washed away her shameful tears, the enclosure giving her at least some privacy while the torrent of grief ripped through her.

Finally, she was able to push past it and breathe again. The weight remained, however, pressing on her heart as she scrubbed herself clean of blood and sweat and wished her soul could have been cleansed as easily.

After dressing in a fresh change of clothes from her backpack, she pulled her wet hair up in a knot at the back of her head and studied herself in the mirror. She looked ancient, as if she’d aged a decade over the past few days, with dark shadows beneath her puffy eyes and lines bracketing her mouth.

She bent to rinse her mouth and splashed cold water onto her eyelids, not wanting to look like she’d been crying. Crying was for the weak and never changed anything. She’d learned that as a child when her parents had been killed, even before the Valkyrie Program had taken over her life.

Straightening, she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. Her eyes were still a little puffy and red but it would have to do.

What was done, was done. She’d spend these next few hours watching over Kiyomi and then get on the plane out of Syria. Once she got back to Laidlaw Hall, she could finally stop running long enough to do some more digging and find out just how great her sins were.

****

“Up two blocks and on the left. Hurry,” Yury said to his Russian contact behind the wheel as they raced to get to the warehouse.

Recent intel had come back that a gunfight had broken out at the building less than an hour ago. Reports were vague. He didn’t know if Amber had been there or if she was one of the dead. If she wasn’t, he was hoping to find a clue that would tell him where she’d gone.

The driver screamed up to the warehouse and hit the brakes. Yury jumped out and ran for the door, the Russian right behind him. Two armed men stood guard, barring their way.

“The female captives. Are they still here?” Yury demanded in Arabic, flashing a fake Russian government agent ID that would get him access because of his country’s ties with the Syrian government and military.

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