Page 63 of Freeing Savannah

Behind him, Savannah made a sound, something between a gasp and a strangled cry. Voodoo glanced over his shoulder. Her hand was at her mouth, her eyes wide, horrified.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

Voodoo turned back to Tomas. “What were you doing here, in the Opera House?”

Tomas chuckled. “Tonight was a distraction. A whisper in the ear of a Chinese diplomat, a swap of encrypted drives in a camera bag. Me? I was backup. Your girl wasn’t even supposed to be part of it. But the Senator got nervous. Thought she might start asking questions. Thought maybeyouwere getting too close.”

“He sent you to silence her?”

Tomas lifted a brow. “Let’s just say if anything happened, it’d be tragic. The world would mourn. And her grieving stepfather would spin the hell out of it.”

Voodoo’s pulse pounded in his ears.McNabney sent a man to kill her. His own stepdaughter.

He hauled Tomas off the floor and slammed him into the wall again. “You’re gonna give me names, locations, every contact you’ve ever made.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll hand you to someone who doesn’t need a reason to make you talk.”

Flint's voice came through the comm in his ear. “Mustang and his team are being diverted your way. ETA five hours. They’re coming in by way of the South Sea to the Pearl River. They’ll take the package off your hands.”

“Sanctioned?” He doubted the Chinese government would look kindly upon a SEAL team breaching their borders.

Flint scoffed. “Hardly.”

“Right.”

“Voodoo,” Haley’s voice came through. “SYBIL’s spitting out info on Tomas, what there is of it. His background isclean. Too clean. Like . . . CIA-front-company-clean.”

“I figured.”

“But there’s more. Jester dropped another file in my inbox. Didn’t even try to hide the breach. It links McNabney to a shell company that’s been moving arms through Asia and Eastern Europe. Guess who signs the end-user certificates?”

Voodoo’s gaze flicked to Savannah.

“McNabney,” he said aloud. “That bastard’s playing the world like a chessboard.”

Haley’s voice dropped. “He’s more dangerous than we thought. And Savannah? She’s not just his stepdaughter. She’s a liability.”

Voodoo looked at Tomas. At the venom in his eyes. And then at Savannah, still trembling.

“I won’t let him use her again,” he said quietly.

Tomas sneered. “Then you’d better run. Because if I don’t finish the job, someone else will.”

Hours later, after a very tense performance, Voodoo and Savannah waited in the dark by the Pearl River. Voodoo stood with Savannah by his side, his hand gently resting at the small of her back. Not possessive, but protective. Her presence was non-negotiable. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight. Not after what Tomas had tried to pull and the threat that still reverberated in his mind.

She was still in her gown, but he’d wrapped his tux jacket around her shoulders, warding off the chill that was more from residual fear and stress than the night air. They’d decided to skip the reception citing illness. She hadn’t spoken since the concert ended.

Voodoo knew she was kicking herself because of her performance. It hadn’t been her greatest and he couldn’t fault her for that. This was her twelfth performance of the tour, and each one had been better than the last. She was due to have one off night.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into his side. “You doing okay?”

“I’m fine.” Yeah, he knew what that meant. When a woman said she was fine, she was far from fine.

He kissed her hairline at her temple. “Love you.”

That, at least, made her smile. “Love you too.”

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