Way of the Shadows (Shadow Agents 8)

“What did you do?”

Her voice was so hoarse.

“I fought four men.”

She pulled away from him.

“I didn’t kill them, I swear, but...if I hadn’t fought, they would’ve pegged me for an agent. I had to prove myself.” He had. “There were three of us there for the initiation. A group circled us, threw back in the men who tried to run. Porter— I turned once and he was in front of me. He knew I wasn’t one of the ones running. He was laughing.” He swallowed bile. “Cheering me on as I attacked.” Dragon, Dragon! He’d just gone by that tag back then, to better fit in with the group.

The guy had even come up and congratulated him on a good fight afterward.

She paled before him. “I have to get out of here. I just— I need to leave.”

He was afraid she was leaving him. “I was undercover. My job was to infiltrate and bring down that organization.”

“No matter the cost.”

She’d been the cost.

Thomas shook his head. “If I’d known for a minute that he was the man who’d arranged your abduction—”

“Why didn’t the EOD apprehend him then? If the rest of the group got contained, then why not him?” Emotion ripped through her words. Pain. Fury. “Why was he left free to hurt and kill?”

“Because he wasn’t there when the EOD team came in. Something had spooked him and he ran.”

Her laugh was cold. Mocking. “I spooked him.”

Thomas frowned at her.

“He must’ve gone back to hunt me. I wasn’t there, the cops were, so he knew he had to clear out.” A bitter smile twisted her lips. “No one else had seen him there, so he just slipped away. Or, sailed away, I guess, since he just boarded the naval vessel and headed to the next port.”

Then he’d kept killing. Only his prey had changed, and he’d started working with a new partner.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas told her. The words weren’t enough. They never would be. For so many years, he’d hated the choices he’d made. A young girl, left alone. He hadn’t realized that someone else was out there, possibly still after her.

“So am I,” Noelle said. Then she jerked open the door and straightened her shoulders. When she left this time, he didn’t follow her. He knew she wanted to get away.

From me.

So he let her go.

* * *

“THIS ISN’T OVER!” Patrick Porter yelled as he grabbed the bars. The woman had left and the agent—Dragon, you liar—had followed on her heels.

They thought they were done? That they just got to walk away while he was tossed into a cell to rot?

No. That wasn’t the way his story would be ending.

“The blood’s gonna be on you!” His bellow seemed to echo back to him. “Another body...on you, Noelle! You thought it was bad when you were the victim? How’s it gonna feel when you realize you let her die? You. Let. Her. Die!”

* * *

AARON BLACK FROWNED as he glanced toward the holding-room door. The jerk in there had been yelling his head off for the past ten minutes. Making threats. Demanding his freedom.

Talking about a victim.

It could be pure bull, of course. A last-ditch effort to save himself. Aaron had seen it before. When facing nothing but a dark cell for endless days, men would lie. They’d promise anything. Everything. Tell any falsehood imaginable.