The Payback (Team Zulu 2)

“You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

“Hmm?” I glanced up in time to catch her skeptical expression. “Just taking your word for it.”

“Right.” She tapped her pencil on the notepad, and her lips twitched. “So, Bolivian drugs?”

“Cocaine, probably.” I sampled the curry. Tasty indeed.

“Do you have enough evidence to prove it?” Sage carved her steak and popped a piece into her mouth.

“Not yet, but I will.”

“Excellent.” She made a note and took another sip of Coke. “That’s fifteen names so far. Not bad for a day’s work.”

“Yeah, and there’s a lot more where those came from.”

Sage offered me a chunk of prime rib. “Your turn. It’s really good.”

Instead of taking the fork, I wrapped my fingers around Sage’s and directed the food to my mouth. Her eyes widened while my hand lingered over hers, and I wondered if she was as hyperaware of the contact as me.

“Mm. It is.” All this food sharing made me eager to sample something else. Ever since I’d met Sage, I’d had the urge to taste her, to explore every inch of her body with my mouth. Her lips, her skin. More than anything, I wanted her naked, legs over my shoulders and my tongue between her thighs. And it wasn’t only to satisfy my curiosity. I wanted to make her feel good. I wanted to have her writhing beneath me, and to take her mind off the current shit show for as long as she’d let me.

I dropped the napkin into my lap and shifted position to ease my discomfort. Being around Sage had me getting hard a dozen times a day. It was like being a goddamned teenager again.

We ate our meals while discussing which targets to focus on next. Once we were done, I moved the tray to the side table and returned to the bed. I was enjoying talking to Sage. She didn’t seem in a hurry to get back to work, either. An alarm would sound on her computer if anyone arrived at or left Dante’s property, and since he and Maxim had settled in for the evening, we could relax a little.

“Do you think Dante has any idea what we’re doing?” Sage asked. “Does he even know who you are?”

“He would assume he’s being watched. He probably doesn’t suspect that we’ve hacked his cameras, but he’s careful on the phone and by not leaving the property. He knows I have decent tracking skills since I reached McKenzie before every other assassin and bounty hunter on the eastern seaboard. But he’s not aware of who I truly am or what I’m capable of.”

“You never approached him when you first started looking for your sister?”

“There was no reason to reveal myself. I did my investigation quietly, uncovered all I could. Besides, I doubted I’d gather anything useful by asking Dante questions.” I’d never needed to resort to interrogation for intel. People lied. Their electronic trail didn’t.

“I guess not.” Sage toyed with a pulled thread on the duvet before her gaze met mine. “What happened to her?” When I hesitated to answer, she continued. “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s upsetting.”

It made sense Sage would ask about Janie’s disappearance. As difficult as it was to discuss, this was necessary.

I exhaled a deep breath. “No. You should probably know what happened so you understand the background.” A small part of me wondered if I shared this story with her, would she reciprocate with her own troubled past? She wanted to tell me. I could read it in her eyes, but every time an opportunity arose, she danced around the facts, only ever giving half-truths.

Why was it so important to me, anyway? Her telling me what I already knew didn’t change a damn thing. And yet itdidmean something because what I wanted from Sage was so much more than listening to her story from her lips. I wanted her to let me in. I wanted her trust. More than that, I wanted her to find me worthy of it.

From the moment I’d hauled her from the path of that motorcycle and held her in my arms, I’d known she was special. Even more than the instant attraction I’d felt, the fearless jut of her jaw and the veiled sorrow in her eyes had called to something deep within me. Maybe because it’d been like looking into my own soul. As cliche as it sounded, we were kindred spirits in our pain.

I respected the hardworking, accomplished woman she’d become despite what she’d gone through. Her drive to do right in this world and to carry the mantle for those unable to fight the country’s most formidable foe was beyond commendable. And then there was the fact that she was so fucking beautiful my brain shorted out every time my gaze landed on her. I suspected she was clueless about all these things. One day, when she was ready, I’d tell her.

Sage had learned who I really was, and it hadn’t scared her off. Outside those in operational roles, no woman had ever glimpsed the dangerous side of my life. That she accepted this part of me, embraced it even, gave me…hope. And somehow that made it easier to tell her about my darkest days.

I cleared my throat before beginning. “I was in Syria on a mission when I got a message to call home. That rarely happens, and my dad had had a mild heart attack six months earlier, so I was worried. I wasn’t prepared for Mom to tell me Janie hadn’t been returning her calls. That was totally out of character for my sister. She was a good student with a decent circle of friends. She volunteered at a homeless shelter in her spare time. Despite the distance, she was close to Mom and Dad and called them often. Out of the two of us, I was the one to give my parents sleepless nights. Never her.”

On the bed beside me, Sage’s focus was unwavering. The only sounds in the room were the computer fans whirring and the gentle hum of the AC.

“I flew home as soon as I could. When I arrived, the police still had nothing. You’re probably aware that in missing persons cases, the trail goes cold fast, but I didn’t lose all hope, because I can access intel others can’t. It’s what I do. What I’m good at. Just not good enough to help Janie.”

Sage folded her arms around herself as though a chill had settled into her bones. The pity in her eyes wasn’t surprising since she knew this story didn’t have a happy ending. Nothing about it was easy to tell.

“Her last known location was a subway station. She visited homeless people squatting there, offering food and a place at the shelter. Maybe whoever took her assumed she was homeless and her absence would go unnoticed like so many other runaways’. She walked into the subway late one night and never came out. Two busted surveillance cameras on the platform were all it took for her abductors to make a clean getaway. And with the maze of tunnels and connecting sewer system, there were limitless possibilities for where they might’ve escaped. The people she’d visited were reluctant to talk. They swore they’d seen nothing. Maybe they were telling the truth.

“I followed every lead until they all dried up. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air. That’d never happened to me before. Of all the people in the world to go missing, my sister was the only one I couldn’t find. I questioned everything. Had I looked at the details too subjectively? Did I miss something because I wasn’t eating or sleeping right? Was she taken because of me? Because I’d crossed the wrong person during my career and Janie was paying the consequences?”